European Research Council (ERC) grants support top researchers to pursue their cutting-edge research. Researchers are selected based on their innovative ideas for future research as well as the exceptional quality of their previous work, and the grants exclusively reward scientific excellence. With a success rate of around 10% of submitted applications, these grants are extremely competitive, which ends up being a guarantee of excellence.
The “Open Universal Science | OPUS” project aims to help reform research evaluation towards a system that encourages and rewards researchers to practice Open Science. The consortium is coordinated by the Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands (PLOCAN) and includes 15 European participants. In September 2022, the first project meeting took place in Las Palmas, Canary Islands. This project will run until August 2025 and will contribute to strengthening NOVA’s commitment to national and European Open Science policies.
The “Sustainable Careers for Researcher Empowerment | SECURE” project, funded by Horizon Europe and approved in 2022, aims to develop measures to coordinate and support the creation, experimentation, implementation, and integration of a common framework for research careers. Aiming to improve research careers by reducing precariousness, the project will contribute to providing a set of options to support organizations in the recruitment, employment, training, development, progression, and mobility of researchers. The project activities will start in January 2023 and will run until the end of 2024.
The EUTOPIA_HEALTH project, funded by the Horizon-Widera program, aims to improve the academic landscape in health-related fields in the so-called European widening countries, in order to reduce disparities in research and value creation. The project will feature a network focused on health through the already established EUTOPIA Connected Communities – foundational communities of the alliance that will receive comprehensive training, research mobility, and seed funding to promote collaborations, especially for early-career researchers. Thus, EUTOPIA_HEALTH aims to create a transformative health innovation ecosystem by implementing flexible academic career paths and integrating open-access science practices to bridge with business partners and policymakers.
The NOVA Institute for Medical Systems Biology (NIMSB) is NOVA’s latest strategic platform. NIMSB is a partnership between the NOVA University Lisbon and the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (Berlin, Germany), supported by the European Union (through the Horizon Europe Teaming for Excellence program), the Portuguese Government, and the Oeiras City Council. NIMSB aims to become an internationally renowned Center of Excellence (CoE) in the development, integration, and application of next-generation systems biology approaches for medical research and innovation, contributing to the development of early diagnostics and advanced therapeutic solutions to offer Precision Medicine to patients. NIMSB will collaborate with a comprehensive ecosystem, including NOVA Institutes and Schools, affiliated hospitals, and multiple partners, to achieve critical mass, establish a Precision Medicine infrastructure, and develop education and training programs that will prepare researchers and healthcare professionals for the future.