Seed funding

EU-CONEXUS ambition

The European University for Smart Urban Coastal Sustainability (EU‐CONEXUS) is a transnational European higher education and research alliance addressing global and local challenges by tackling coastal environmental, technical, economic and societal needs.

EU-CONEXUS is a fully-fledged university. It offers education, training, study programmes, performs research and links with socioeconomic actors for supporting innovation. The EU-CONEXUS community brings together researchers, teachers and students from the different partner institutions and aims to foster internal collaboration between them by offering Seed Funding.

Objectives of the seed funding

The overall objective of the Seed Funding is to enhance collaboration between EU-CONEXUS partners in education, research and innovation on SmUCS topics.

Therefore research & academic teams from EU-CONEXUS partner universities can apply for funding through the Seed Funding in order to develop small-scale internal collaborative education, research and innovation projects in the field of Smart Urban Coastal Sustainability (SmUCS).

Expected outcomes of the projects must be tangible: possibility to work together on a bigger project, joint research, joint participation in a conference, preparation of a joint publication, joint study programme, etc.

Eligibility criteria

• Eligible beneficiaries are the nine EU-CONEXUS partner universities. Other organisations can participate but do not receive any funding.
• A project proposal must be submitted.
• The project proposal subject must be in the field of Smart Urban Coastal Sustainability (SmUCS).
• At least 2 researchers or academics from 2 different EU-CONEXUS partner universities must be involved in the project (other organisations cannot be part of this core group).
• The proposed projects can be funded for up to maximum 12 months.

Evaluation criteria

The proposal will be assessed with regards to 3 main criteria:

Scientific excellence:

• Relevance of the project with regards to the societal challenge of Smart Urban Coastal Sustainability, Scientific contribution and innovation of the proposed project,
• Appropriateness, completeness and clarity of the methodology

Impact:

• Impact of proposed activities and results, in particular for EU-CONEXUS, Expected outcomes

Quality & efficiency of implementation:

• Work plan, Organisation, Budget coherence with regards to project ambition, Deliverables

Funding criteria

• Eligible costs are: consumables, conference fees, publication fees, travels, equipment, etc. (no personnel costs are eligible). A detailed budget must be provided.
• The funding is maximum €4400 (VAT included) per project.
• Co-funding is allowed whether it comes from the partners’ own funds or from public or private funds.
• The expenses related to each project are taken in charge directly by EU-CONEXUS.
• There is funding available for approximately 15 small-scale projects in total distributed within the 3 calls (around 5 projects supported per call).

Selection rules

In a first step the Project Development Support Office will assess the conformity of the application to this call and its technical eligibility. Applications will be anonymised.

In a second step, anonymised applications will be evaluated by a rotating committee composed of 3 representatives from 3 partner universities (committee members will come from EUCONEXUS Plus Work Package in charge of setting up the Project Development Support Office). For this first call, the committee members will come from University of Rostock, Agricultural University of Athens and Frederick University. A ranking of the projects will be provided by the committee and approximately 5 proposals will be selected for funding.

The projects selected will be presented to the Research or Academic Councils depending on the field covered by the projects.

A report will be requested at the end of each project.

Application

The project leader has to send the completed application form (Annex 1) to the following
email address: projects@eu-conexus.eu

Deadline for applications is October 31st, 2023 at the latest (two follow-up calls will be
launched in January 2024 and January 2025).

For more information click here!