On Tuesday, January 24, the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) presented iMOVE, a new program that aims to promote the international mobility of its research personnel in training. The initiative, which has the support of Fundación General CSIC (FGCSIC) and Santander Universidades, will support short stays in innovation and development centers and companies abroad through the granting of complementary aid.
During the presentation of the program, the president of CSIC, Eloísa del Pino, emphasized that the initiative “will cover something that many predoctoral students do not receive in their contracts: stays abroad; not only will it improve the training of some 400 students in training, but it will also serve to internationalize our institution”. Carmen Simón, director of the CSIC’s Department of Postgraduate Studies and Specialization (DPE), the driving force behind the initiative, added: “It will certainly contribute to their training and broaden their international professional relations”. Ramón Torrecillas, managing director of Fundación General CSIC (FGCSIC) said that “this program will help to generate a critical mass of young research talent that will carry out innovation with a capital letter, an innovation that will be rooted in science”. Matías Rodríguez Inciarte, president of Santander Universidades, stated that this initiative “is essential because internationalization opens our eyes to the outside world; opening up to other worlds is deeply enriching and living abroad is extraordinarily stimulating.
This call, whose maximum amount is 400,000 euros, is intended to finance complementary grants that may be requested by researchers and doctors attached to CSIC’s institutes, centers or units together with the predoctoral staff of their research groups. Each applicant may apply for only one grant associated with a doctoral thesis that he/she is supervising and which is being carried out in his/her institute, center or unit. The grants, intended only to cover room and board, apply to stays of one to three months, for training purposes, in R+D+i centers or companies abroad to carry out work in research centers or laboratories, consultation of bibliographic collections or documentation, learning new instrumental techniques and other activities, within the scope of a specific and novel project of the doctoral thesis of those enrolled in a doctoral program.
The stays may be enjoyed until the end of 2023 within the predoctoral period at CSIC. To define the order of priority of the beneficiaries, the following criteria will be taken into account: greater seniority since the predoctoral person began his/her doctoral thesis, which will be defined by the academic year of the first enrollment in the doctoral program; link with CSIC or, in the case of mixed centers, with any of the entities of the agreement; less time of stay of more than one month in foreign centers since the beginning of the doctoral thesis (first academic year of enrollment).
