EARMA Conference Oslo

Democratising access to AI across a research organisation

How to get AI into the system of a large research organisation

Format: Fifteen-Minute Discussion Tables

Category: 3. Good Practice

Topic: Organising Support Services & Team Building

In this table I'd like to discuss our unique AI consulting concept and how it works in practice.

We set up a free AI consulting service for Helmholtz Association scientists, i.e. currently 35 AI experts work for an organisation of 42,000 in short and mid term projects (no charge, our AI consulting is free for the researchers!); I'd like to share how we manage and pair supply/demand and would be happy to happy to discuss friction points and success stories.

New demands in a new era: Cluster building for greater impact

Taking advantage of the experiences of the EURION cluster

Format: Fifteen-Minute Discussion Tables

Category: 3. Good Practice

Topic: Impact

With the increasing emphasis on impact of
research and synergies across research activities and projects, new requirements
are emerging for research managers and administrators to facilitate this strive
for greater impact. This session will scan the horizons for new requirements, opportunities,
skills and potential obstacles for joint collaboration across EU-funded
research projects. The participants will discuss and share their ideas,
experiences and lessons learned on joint efforts from research management as
well as communication and dissemination perspectives. 

Transnational approaches for strengthening early stage research administrators

Questions and experiences from the ADMIN project

Format: Fifteen-Minute Discussion Tables

Category: 3. Good Practice

Topic: Professional Development and Recognition

The main objective of the ADMIN project (Boosting Research Administration Skills and Services) with partners from five European countries (2020-2022) is to contribute to capacity building of research support staff and enhancing the prospect for Research & Innovation (R&I) projects and initiatives in European funding schemes. The second objective is to strengthen and expand the network of research support staff across project partner countries and beyond so as to allow free flow of information, knowledge and exchange of best practices hence increasing the prospects for excellence in research administration. The overall aim is to boost the capacities of research administrators by improving their performance, highlighting the visibility of their work and outcomes and strengthening relations with academic/scientific staff. The target groups are early stage research administrators who are faced to the challenge to respond to every-day tasks on R&I projects, academic staff, stakeholders and students. We would like to discuss some major questions central to the project with conference participants: Are you familiar with innovative best practice approaches for research management (case studies from various institutions)? What are daily challenges/problems you are facing in your work environment? Results of the discussions will be incorporated in project outputs: an educational video "alone in the office" and a project management handbook including case studies with best practice approaches from varous countries, among them the Application Lab at Harz University/Germany.

Building a Project Management Team

During this session we will discuss the Project Management team of Université de Paris’ Research Directorate, from the creation to its implementation.

Format: Oral 30 Minutes

Category: 3. Good Practice

Topic: Project Management

Born in 2019 from the merger of the universities of Paris Diderot, Paris Descartes and Institut de physique du Globe de Paris, the ambition of Université de Paris is to lead and develop an exceptional potential to meet the challenges of tomorrow’s society. The merger that led to the creation of Université de Paris is unlike other French university mergers because both constituent institutions were quasi comprehensive and of equivalent size. As a result, the three Faculties that structure UP integrate entities from both universities and, within each Faculty, most departments will also undergo a process of transformation and merger. At the central level of the institution, in the Directorate General for Research, International, Technology Transfer et Graduate Schools Department (DRIVE), the Project Managers (PM) are responsible for a the portfolio of projects coordinated at Université de Paris. It includes ERC grants, MSCA, mutli-benieficary projects funded under H2020 Pillar 3 and COST actions. PM, as they follow closely the projects from the granting process to the end, are key actors of the research projects. They indeed: - Are expert of EU funding schemes - Close to the ground: they are in contact with the PI, the research teams and the administrators who run the laboratories - In the heart of the central level: they can easily be in contact with the Finance or Accounting office as well as HR or doctoral schools. However, their knowledge is not shared in the institution. This is the main reason why we decided to reorganise the time of projects managers and link them to the central bodies of the institution, at the DRIVE. So we split their time between projects coordination (between 50% and 60%) and share of good practice. The latter goes from creation of process to organisation of European working group and include the creation of white paper or wiki. The scientific aspect aside, the good implementation of a research project might also remain on every different administrative teams working smoothly together. This is however not easy achieve. Especially after a merging process, the communication between administrative teams can slow down. There is then an urgent need to reconnect everybody together. We hope that this new organisation will lead to the acquisition of skills for every teams participating to the success of the projects. This will also raise awareness of EU projects rules in Departments that are not at the heart of project management but who are however key to their success. We intend that the good implementation of the projects will come back to the writing Grant office in the Faculties, which will have concrete example of how to run a successful project.The purspose of this presentation is to share the actions and the tools we put in place to improve the dialogue between teams and their results.

Co-creating strategies with research environments

Format: Oral 30 Minutes

Category: 3. Good Practice

Topic: Organising Support Services & Team Building

Research environments/groups often need a strategy to become successful. However, we lack guidelines and processes to aid environments in their strategic development. In this session we share our conclusions from working closely with research environments to define strategic plans and implementation through co-creation. We will thereby suggest that facilitating co-creative processes enables refined strategies and action plans anchored within a research environment.

Developing Project Managers' Competence at Laurea University of Applied Sciences

Format: Oral 30 Minutes

Category: 3. Good Practice

Topic: Professional Development and Recognition

The discussion table session will give a quick sight into Laurea University of Applied Sciences' (Finland) actions to develop competence in project management. These measures include a training programme for project managers and informal coffee and sympathy discussion sessions for project experts. Laurea’s in-house training programme, Certified Project Manager (CPM), and informal discussion sessions are open for project managers and research and development (R&D) experts.

Diamonds in your Sofa

What you don't know you know in your institutional repository

Format: Oral 30 Minutes

Category: 3. Good Practice

Topic: Research information systems (CRIS)

Every RPO has or should have an institutional repository. As a showcase for what you do especially outputs that are not suitable for 'publication, they are hard to beat but how many of us extract the full value from them? How many of us treat them as electronic warehouses and never look at them again? In short, how many of us have no idea of how much really know?

Repositories store so much more than just full-text articles, they are used to catalogue everything from artworks to zoom logs and everything in between and that breadth represents hidden but real actionable intelligence for strategy and planning.

We will present our experience in TU Dublin as we use our repository, alongside all the other sources to plan our new research ecosystem.

ERION: The Ethics & Research Integrity community within EARMA

Building bridges between administrators, researchers and policy-makers

Format: Oral 30 Minutes

Category: 3. Good Practice

Topic: Policy, Strategy, Evaluation and Foresight

We will reflect on the importance of
ethics and research integrity for research managers and administrators in the European
context and what EARMA is doing in this regard since 2018. ERION is the
Ethics and Research Integrity Officer Network within EARMA. Topics addressed in
the meetings have covered ethics and research integrity in Horizon Europe, Open
Science, GDPR implementation, training and many others.ERION acts as a stakeholder for the European Commission DG R&I
Ethics Sector.

A key component
of ERION is the SOPs4RI project which is working for a strong research
integrity culture in Europe.

Improving researcher's participation in Horizon Europe through effective showcase of interests in upcoming calls

Format: Oral 30 Minutes

Category: 3. Good Practice

Topic: Policy, Strategy, Evaluation and Foresight

Some of the challenges every large organization has, when it comes to participation to European programmes and that normally impact the research support systems activities are:
• Creation of collaboration dialogues with other organisations to generate proposals
• The possibility to have fast and easy access to available expertise for specific collaborations generation
• The possibility to facilitate/stimulate the participation of newcomer scientists

It's a Research manager’s crisis baby!

Ten golden rules to survive the personal frustration when promoting European projects culture in research organizations

Format: Oral 30 Minutes

Category: 3. Good Practice

Topic: Organising Support Services & Team Building

Once more… no answers…. It is ten o’clock in the morning and you still haven’t received any reply to the last “EU funding opportunities” mail that you sent two days ago. Siping your coffee in front of your screen you realize that actually none of your “EU funding opportunities” mails got any answer… Ever. Researchers in your institutions seem just not interested in EU projects. You feel sad and kind of useless. Do not worry, it is normal: It’s a research manager’s frustration. It is not contagious, and thanks to these ten simple rules you will soon feel better.

In the last ten years, most European research organizations have invested considerable resources to increase their European research projects portfolio. These policies originate at national level from the desire of European Countries to recover, through the funds provided by European research and innovation programs (e.g. Horizon Europe), part of the money they invest to participate in the European Union. Research organizations have therefore all implemented ambitious European policies with the scope of considerably increase the number of EU-funded projects. They equipped themselves with departments of research management and highly skilled research managers eager to help researchers to build and win thousands of EU projects. Unfortunately, these policies often sink in the shallow waters of reality. Most researchers are not attracted by European funds, which are seen as time consuming, too competitive, and also too difficult to manage compared to national funds. This Euro-inappetence makes the work of research managers difficult and undermines their chances of achieving the goals set by their organizations. This can provoke frustration and in the worst case, can lead to resignation from the job.

The European Affairs service of theInstitut National
de Recherche en Informatique et Automatique (Inria), which counts eight
offices around France, has come up with a list of 10 Golden Rules to overcome
this frustration and motivate researchers to participate and coordinate
European projects.

In this session, we will use these rules as starting point to engage an active discussion with the audience, sharing experiences, and exploring new ideas. Speakers will animate the debate encouraging the audiences to provide feedback through direct interventions (brainstorming) and through a participative game-based learning platform (e.g. Kahoot!)

Open Research Europe

An alternative publishing model in action

Format: Oral 30 Minutes

Category: 3. Good Practice

Topic: Open Science & Responsible Research & Innovation

In March 2021 the European Commission launched their new publishing platform, Open Research Europe in collaboration with F1000, in doing so, solidifying their commitment to making open science an achievable mandate for their Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe beneficiaries. This presentation will go through the publishing model of Open Research Europe highlighting some different aspects of the platform devised to ensure it is meeting the needs of researchers from all the subject areas it covers.

Post-award tool kit: simplification and digitalisation to support research management

Strategies and tools to support the post award phase implemented at Ca’ Foscari University

Format: Oral 30 Minutes

Category: 3. Good Practice

Topic: Project Management

Ca’ Foscari has launched a series of initiatives aiming at simplifying and improving the current management and post award reporting procedures. This is part of the University’s plan to develop and strengthen the support offered throughout the project life cycle.

Research evaluation matters

Barriers and incentives towards responsible research evaluations at Danish Universities

Format: Oral 30 Minutes

Category: 3. Good Practice

Topic: Policy, Strategy, Evaluation and Foresight

Research evaluation is too often about measuring what can be measured instead of what should be measured. The starting point should not be the availability of data, but what is valued about the entity under evaluation. The PARE-project (Probing 5 arguments for responsible evaluation on HE leaders) examines knowledge and attitudes toward value driven research assessment among leaders at Danish universities and uncovers barriers and incentives to responsible research evaluation practice.

The ETO: creating synergies between transversal funding programmes

Format: Oral 30 Minutes

Category: 3. Good Practice

Topic: Organising Support Services & Team Building

In 2019, Université Côte d’Azur initiated a transformation process to merge the departments in charge of external fundings, which, led to the creation of the European and Territorial Office. ETO is a one-stop shop gathering policy and project Experts for all type of funding and at any level. ETO adopts an approach by project and not by call, thus creating synergies between funding programmes and supporting the scaling up from the local level to the European and international one.

Developing Staff and Their Career Paths in the New Work Environment

Format: Oral 60 Minutes

Category: 3. Good Practice

Topic: Professional Development and Recognition

Over the past decade global investments in research and development (R&D) have continued to grow in what the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has termed the move towards “the knowledge economy”. Governments across the world have increased their investments in R&D with the universities being a major beneficiary as recipients of the research funding. This increase in research funding and requirements for proper financial and ethical management of the research enterprise has in turn resulted in continued global growth of research administration as a profession. The expansion of the profession has been helped with longstanding strategies for training of new staff and continued professional development of existing staff to meet the needs of the research enterprise. These strategies have included using internal training programs within the institutions, staff meetings, pairing of staff to work together in the office, as well as attendance in professional conferences and training offerings.
With the changes in the work environment resulting from the COVD-19 pandemic and variations in the schedule that include fully remote or a hybrid of remote and office work schedules, the existing strategies for staff development may not be as effective and need adjustments to meet the needs of the “new normal”.
This session will focus on initiating a discussion amongst participants in order to identify and share good practices in how to address the staff’s professional development needs, such as:

• How to successfully “on-board” new employees in the remote or hybrid environment?
• What are successful strategies used to maintain the team spirit and cohesiveness in this “new normal”?
• In an in-person work environment, staff gain significant knowledge from the routine conversations (“the so-called cross-pollination”) with co-workers. How can this valuable opportunity be maintained in the new work environment?
• Similarly, some of the best information exchange can happen through random interactions (passing in corridors, meeting at the water cooler). Is there an on-line equivalent?
• How can staff gain recognition for their talents where casual interactions and networking opportunities with their colleagues is limited?

Informal professional learning in supporting lecturer research development and know-how

The Research Career Wheel in a nutshell

Format: Oral 60 Minutes

Category: 3. Good Practice

Topic: Professional Development and Recognition

We investigated how academic staff move from implicit to explicit professional development, identifying the utilisation of internal and external enablers to support changing from a ‘restricted’ to an ‘extended’ research professional (Evans, 2013). Sampling a cross section of academics and research managers in 15 UK (post 1992 and Russell Group) and 11 Applied Universities a small online survey investigated how increased research quality can be achieved by developing the internal enablers first, helping researchers increase confidence and develop expertise and where internal experienced teacher-researchers mentored and encouraged growth of new researchers. Preliminary results indicate that university driven motivation is a positive and significant predictor of the development of a researcher’s development. Our results also indicate that a lack of institutional reputation has a significant effect on the development of a researcher’s confidence. These key findings are presented in one poster, the ‘Research Career Wheel’– identifying the importance of recognising internal and external ‘enablers’ in academic staff transitioning to research outputs, together with the impact of recognition by formal external bodies accelerating and facilitating the development of internal research policies and development cultures. International accreditations (AACSB, EPAS) and rankings highlight the need for inclusive approaches to developing research capacity of Faculty staff.
Ultimately, Faculty staff that develop into more professional researchers enrich the delivery of their subject matter and the academic curriculum, as well as potentially making novel knowledge contributions to academic fields. The development of scholarly active Faculty staff benefits the Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) and various stakeholders, including students, teachers, corporate partners, academics, practitioners and policy makers, and simultaneously strongly underpins the HEIs Research Policy and Strategy.
Important learning outcomes of the session will be:
- how to use the Research Career Wheel in a workshop format as a researcher development tool;
- discuss what forms of university driven motivation you could use to enhance researchers’ professional journey
- allowing delegates sharing best practices in a Q&A

Open Acces Pilots - changing funders' OA policies and practice in Widening countries

Experiences from implementation of Open Access policies in Poland and Czech Republic with EEA and Norway Grants

Format: Oral 60 Minutes

Category: 3. Good Practice

Topic: Open Science & Responsible Research & Innovation

Researchers alone cannot make Open Access happen, as institutional policies at funding agency level play an important role. In countries with low participation in Horizon, experience with H2020-OA conditions remains limited. Hence, implementation of OA policies by national research funders is an important prerequisite for Open Science in Europe. This session explores the progress made and challenges remaining in introducing Open Access, based on experiences from research programmes supported by EEA and Norway Grants.

Collaboration of Research Managers within University Alliances

Format: Pecha Kucha

Category: 3. Good Practice

Topic: Proposal Development

Many of us belong to established university alliances, but haven’t you ever had the feeling that nothing concrete comes out of the collaboration? What is the secret of developing a fruitful long-term strategic collaboration between research managers, which really supports and facilitates your daily work?
At Nordic Five Tech, we found a good recipe for success that we want to share with you in our presentation.

MSCA PF support scheme as a tool for maintaining the sustainability of an established research centre from structural funds

Format: Pecha Kucha

Category: 3. Good Practice

Topic: Proposal Development

Since 2010, there have been almost 50 research centres built in Czechia thanks to the financial support from ERDF/ESF. However, the challenge they face remains: How to secure sustainability without support from structural funds? Moreover, at CATRIN research centre, connected to Palacký University Olomouc, we are not widely involved in teaching activities, and therefore lack the backup of “money for students”, which makes sustainability an even more imminent issue. For that reason, we have to refocus from structural/national grants to more competitive (and excellent) schemes under Horizon Europe. So what kind of grant strategy and measures should we take to achieve further development of our research activities and their sustainable growth? In case of CATRIN, we particularly focus on ERC, WIDERA and EIC grants that are already being implemented, but also on measures leading to a more extensive involvement in Pillar II, as well as MSCA.It is specifically our MSCA experience that shows how developed support schemes for Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship applicants can be developed on lower level at Universities and other research institutions. On the case of Sinophone Borderlands research centre (a part of Faculty of Arts, Palacký University Olomouc) we will show how , over the last three years this support scheme has had a very concrete impact on the amount of submitted proposals and the success rate. We will present tools useful especially for widening countries as well as the how to attract early stage researchers. On the basis of surveys between MSCA applicants, we will present what level of support is expected from their perspective. Additionally, various tips for motivating potential supervisors will be discussed. The core of the presented functional support MSCA-PF mechanism consists of a three-month course (1 hour/per week) – 30-minute presentations by the project manager, 30-minute discussion between applicants, MS Teams support platform (as an information hub with general as well as private channels), 2 MSCA hackathons (intensive writing weeks when consultants on different topics are available all day – ethics, dissemination, open science, gender etc.), Show & Tell Day (opening the proposal to other applicants and their supervisors), Internal peer-review process (comments from three experts), and individual consultations. Advantages and disadvantages of this approach will be shown in concrete examples. The engagement of previous success holders is necessary.A more intensive communication, collaboration and integration of effective MSCA preparation approaches and teams across other motivated Czech institution is our next goal for the near future. To pilot a novel mode of co-creation/co-designing and a common implementation of training programmes for both MSCA-PF candidates and MSCA research support staff, we started an intensive collaboration with a MSCA team from Masaryk University In January 2022.Our ambition for 2023 is to share the resulting experience and training programmes with a wider Czech research support staff community. Within the framework of the recently established CZARMA, we will organise a series of facilitated meetings and establish specific working groups to support preparation of MSCA schemes, but also to generally strengthen MSCA relevant knowledge, including post-award practice. Integrated efforts of such a significant community can be beneficial for a wider international community, too, and have potential to get/raise our collaborative capabilities and competences, as research support professionals, to a next level.

Adapting to the new policies – turning IBEC into a fully open institute

Format: Poster

Category: 3. Good Practice

Topic: Open Science & Responsible Research & Innovation

Open science is a policy priority for the European Commission and the standard method of working under its research and innovation funding programmes.
As open science is one of the strategic areas of the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), the Strategic Initiatives unit at IBEC, in charge of the overall institutional positioning strategy of IBEC, has adapted its structure to foster our work on this field.

From Need Identification to Impactful Projects – Co-Creative Process to Support Project Idea and Proposal Preparation

Format: Poster

Category: 3. Good Practice

Topic: Impact

World’s multidimensional global challenges need to be addressed using all intertwined potential of science and research, innovation, business, public sector and civil society. Identification of the large-scale challenges and more specific needs at local level is a joint effort. Utilisation of foresight information is of utmost importance in finding the pathways towards sustainable and inclusive solutions and impact for societies.

To capitalise the value of impact, it’s essential to ensure that impact is considered as the starting point for project ideation process. The link between project portfolio and institutional strategy needs to be strengthened, as strategy defines the pathway towards desired impact On the other hand, it also constitutes the main tool to prioritise operative actions during times of scarce resources.

Tampere University of Applied Sciences (TAMK) implements the project idea process and platform (EARMA Conference 2021). New elements include incorporation of a pre-ideation phase and clarification of impact targets of project ideas. Yet, the main aim remains to be to secure the alignment of externally funded project portfolio with the institution strategy. The objective of the new elements is to increase the number of new, more mature project ideas, to improve the quality of early-stage idea expert support, and to guarantee an open, collaborative platform for staff members for cross-disciplinary project idea maturation.

In the new phase regarding raw project ideas, idea description can still be short and unorganised. The online platform is accessible for all staff members offering the opportunity for collaborative and cross-disciplinary reflection among peers and early support from RDI experts. There is a direct channel to the second phase where the project idea is elaborated in more detail. The main project objectives must be described, and a financial plan defined. Alignment with institution’s strategy is ensured, and targeted impacts have to be described. The process also requires reflecting the idea against the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

In the transparent decision-making process, the Vice President and Head of External Funding give either approval to proceed with the application preparation with necessary resources, or the idea is returned with constructive feedback.

The coverage of project idea management with one process and platform supported by RDI specialists effectively supports TAMK’s strategic, managerial, financial and quality processes and facilitates impact creation. Systematic supportive approach from project idea need identification to early-stage impact consideration has ensured that TAMK’s project portfolio has grown both in number and in quality. Process also strengthens joint institutional values such as co-creation, transparency, equality, cross-disciplinarity and openness. TAMK is more ready to identify and tackle multidimensional local and global challenges with the collaboration of relevant actors to achieve impactful solutions.

The strategic idea process has been implemented in TAMK since 2014. Besides the successes, there still are obvious places for improvement. These include the growing demand for continuous competence development of RDI support experts and research managers in areas such as impact thinking, early-stage idea facilitation, forecasting capabilities, and knowledge of various funding schemes and the policy frameworks behind them.

Lockdown as a catalyst for researcher engagement

Reimagining effective strategies

Format: Poster

Category: 3. Good Practice

Topic: Proposal Development

In this poster the ADAPT Research Development team (RDT) reflects on how researcher engagement was re-imagined throughout the Covid lockdowns. We invite you to share your ideas on novel hybrid/blended solutions of providing RMA. What worked well for your institutions during these times? What didn’t? With the re-emergence from lockdowns will it all be online from now on? This session will explore strategies used, and how to retain best practices in our post-Covid world? Since the emergence of Covid and the move to working from home the multi-institutional ADAPT RDT (which includes eight Higher Education Institutions spread across three provinces in Ireland with over 300 researchers from numerous disciplines) instigated a number of tools and techniques to assist with effective researcher engagement in remote working environments. Traditionally pre-Covid, a significant amount of the team’s engagement with researchers was via formal pre-organised and informal in-person meetings, as well as open door drop-ins in the office, resulting in strengthened relationships and engagement. In our Research Centre, this is particularly pertinent with the RDT working side-by-side with academics, postdocs and PhD students all sharing the same space. With the forced move to work off-site, these interactions were lost. To begin addressing this void during Covid, the team implemented several new processes to connect in a novel way with researchers. Tailored virtual call information sessions were scheduled, after exercises to map activities for specific calls. Virtual writing sprints, proposal intelligence workshops, recorded training sessions, feedback loop/s for draft material and portal guidance were all incorporated into our practices. These virtual processes were promoted through various channels, from mailing lists, collaborations with both Education and Public Engagement, Marketing and Communications colleagues within the Centre, to directly through PI’s leading groups across the Centre. In addition, the RDT became increasingly aware of the importance of researcher well-being at this time. This was emphasized by the results of several questionnaires circulated to research staff via Centre management and observed in our day-to-day internal interactions. The focus on researcher well-being led to a softer engagement strategy; not only call/opportunity based but in the form of light touch weekly “drop-in” coffee sessions, focussed on free discussion, as well as one-to-one follow-up sessions when and where necessary. The well-being of the members of the RDT was also brought into focus with bi-weekly check-in sessions scheduled, as informal catch-ups with emphasis on team welfare. Learning outcomes: The researcher-managed process sessions have generated strong interest, been well attended and submission numbers in those calls have remained steady and in some cases increased throughout the pandemic period. The “drop-in” coffee sessions have led to a number of fruitful discussions between researchers, in particular some collaborative transdisciplinary research opportunities have stemmed from these weekly interactions, as well as building and sustaining relationships during difficult times. This session is aimed at pre-award research managers in any stage of their career (beginner to expert). The focus is to share ideas on novel blended solutions of providing RMA and retaining best practices on a return to office settings.

Story of the KAPPA Programme

How it started and how it's going - a story of Czech newbies setting up a schema of European format, that despite all challenges became a resistant and unique programme at the TA CR.

Format: Poster

Category: 3. Good Practice

Topic: International

The poster shows the timeline of the KAPPA funding programme for applied research financed by the EEA and Norway Grants, with some interesting numbers reached since its launch. The programme is aimed at supporting international cooperation between Czechia and Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, which makes it a unique programme in many ways. Some of the challenges and newly adopted practices inspired by the European programmes are displayed.

THE ISGLOBAL PROJECTS UNIT: AN INTEGRATED APPROACH OF SCIENCE COORDINATION AND ADMINISTRATION

How to align science and management after the merge of three institutions

Format: Poster

Category: 3. Good Practice

Topic: Organising Support Services & Team Building

The Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) mission is to improve global health and promote health equity. ISGlobal approach is multidisciplinary, ranging from the molecular to the population level and including disciplines across health sciences, life sciences, environmental, social and climate sciences. It is the result of a large integration process of three previously existing research and translation centers of excellence (CRESIB, CREAL and ISGlobal) which was completed in 2016.Regarding the research and scientific coordination, and the grants management, the previous projects offices of CREAL and CRESIB went through an integration process, involving 1) an analysis of the structures, processes and resources at that time, 2) an analysis of the internal satisfaction surveys, and 3) and a benchmarking analysis, including several national and international institutes. As a result of this process, an integrated approach was proposed: the ISGLOBAL PROJECTS UNIT. The Terms of Reference of the Projects Unit were approved by the Direction Committee in December 2016, as a hierarchically dependent structure both from the Scientific Director and from the General Manager, guaranteeing that science and administration are completely aligned.The Projects Unit includes two offices: 1) the Office for Coordination and Research Management; in charge of scientific and strategy coordination, development and implementation of institutional and scientific internal policies, research integrity and ethics, and quality; and 2) the Grants Office, which provides personalized and anticipatory support to identify and successfully approach the more relevant funders and funding opportunities, and supports researchers and other teams in the preparation and submission of proposals and the follow up of awarded project and fellowships. The key members of the Unit meet weekly to coordinate, plan and review the main activities at the Projects Unit Coordination Committee.The Unit works closely with i) the HHRR area to support the development of the HRS4R accreditation logo and implement procedures that reinforce internationalization, career development, promote gender equality and foster social responsiveness; ii) the ISGlobal teams to prepare grants submissions including costing, management and ethical issues and to provide support to sponsored projects including contracting, financial reports and audits. Since its approval, the Projects Unit has been positively evaluated by the Direction Committee (July 2019) and has received competitive funds (~0.5M€) to deploy its strategy during the period 2019-2023, especially the preparation for the new EU framework programme, Horizon Europe.Thanks to the unique expertise of each office, the Projects Unit provides high-value management support to researchers and becomes a key element within the institutional strategy to promote its international leadership.

The Impact Workshop- Success Story on Collaboration of Research Funding and Innovation Advisors

Format: Poster

Category: 3. Good Practice

Topic: Impact

We began the development of The Impact workshop 2013. The starting point was that funding organisations expect research projects to have an impact that is not just innovation development, but a wider concept where the results of projects are exploited by society at large. To meet this need an “Impact Clinic” was developed as a collaborative effort of research funding and innovation advisors at the University of Jyväskylä. In the presentation, we explore the development phases of the workshop from an open event to a tailored workshop offered to support the design of individual projects.