All applicants are advised to review the Annotated Rules For COST Actions prior to submitting their grant applications. (see Funding Documents & Guidelines | COST)
General Call for ITC Conference Grants for the 1st grant period
The ITC Conference Grants (ITC-CGs) provide financial support for Young Researchers and Innovators affiliated in an Inclusiveness Target Country (ITC) / Near Neighbour Country (NNC) for their participation in high-level conferences whose scientific objectives are in line with the EU-MACE’s grand challenge.
The grantee receives support for attending and presenting their work (oral presentation) at a conference and can establish new contacts for future collaborations. They are aimed at supporting researchers in their early career stages to increase their individual mobility and international visibility, strengthening existing networks and fostering international collaboration. In addition, the grantee agrees to contribute to increasing the Action visibility to the conference community by including a 1-page description of EU-MACE and its objectives.
ITC-CGs priority is given to applicants willing to attend conferences whose scientific/research focus resonates with the Action objective: Create a new form of alliance across the entire innovation value chain of materials for clean energy applications by overcoming the fragmentation of materials research and technology development and via supporting informed decisions by diverse stakeholders. In other words, EU-MACE strives to build a systemic approach around MAPs for accelerated integration and scale-up production of advanced functional materials for low-carbon technologies. The target audience should be found at large-scale international conferences on materials science (with energy application session), on data-science and open science, focused renewable energy technologies (photovoltaics, batteries,…) etc., as well as at industrial innovation forums to attract manufacturers in the renewable energy sector. Example research focus topics are:
Special provision for “Accelerate Conference 2024” in Vancouver, CA (August 06-09, 2024)
In accordance with the above stated priorities of EU-MACE, the Action has identified “Acceleration Conference 2024” organized by the Acceleration Consortium (AC) to be the most beneficial event. The AC at the University of Toronto is a global community of academia, government, and industry accelerating the design and discovery of a wide range of new materials and molecules, from renewable energy and consumer electronics to drugs. Using self-driving laboratories, the AC leverages the power of artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, engineering and chemistry to dramatically reduce the time and cost of bringing these advanced materials to market—from an average of 20 years and $100 million to as little as 1 year and $1 million. The AC Conference series is the largest international conference dedicated to AI and robotic assisted materials discovery and development research (highly relevant to EU-MACE Action). This year’s edition is held in conjunction with the German-Canadian Materials Acceleration Center workshop. The announced program of the conference focuses on the tools (Accelerating discovery with leading-edge tools such, e.g., ML, AI-aided experimental design and characterizations, materials databases, robotics, etc.), the materials (Accelerating development of sustainable materials and molecules for a resilient world) and the Ecosystem (Designing of ethical and equitable translation ecosystems for accelerated discovery, including training, education, access, etc.). These focus areas resonate perfectly with the objectives of EU-MACE providing a unique opportunity for the Action members to present their research work and interact with the world-leading experts on materials acceleration R&D.
We foresee two grants (max) to support the young researchers and investigators from academic institutions and SMEs (less than 10 ppl) to attend the Accelerate Conference 2024. Interested candidates must submit abstracts through the conference website Home (accelerate24.ca) prior to applying for the ITC conference grant. Oral presentations are privileged under this special provision.
More about Eligibility, Evaluation Criteria and other rules
Application submission: From 1st March 2024 to 31st July 2024 (funds allocated on a rolling basis)
Notification of application outcome: Within three calendar weeks after their submission date
Conference attendance period: before 10th September 2024
All applicants are advised to review the Annotated Rules For COST Actions prior to submitting their grant applications. (see Funding Documents & Guidelines | COST)
General Call for Dissemination Conference Grants for the 1st grant period
The Dissemination Conference Grants (DCGs) provide financial support for delivering oral presentations on the work of EU-MACE by the Action participants at high-level conferences fully organized by a third party, i.e. not organized nor co-organized by the COST Action.
The aim:
To reach and engage relevant stakeholders, DCGs priority is given to propositions for attending conferences whose scientific/research focus resonates with the Action objective: Create a new form of alliance across the entire innovation value chain of materials for clean energy applications by overcoming the fragmentation of materials research and technology development and via supporting informed decisions by diverse stakeholders. Such audience should be found at large-scale international conferences on materials science (with energy application session), on data-science and open science, focused renewable energy technologies (photovoltaics, batteries,…) etc., as well as at industrial innovation forums to attract manufacturers in the renewable energy sector.
Special provision for “Materials Week” in Limasol, Cyrprus (July 17-21, 2024)
In accordance with the above stated priorities of EU-MACE, the Action has identified “Materials Week 2024” as the most beneficial conference that takes place within the first grant period. The conference is co-organized by several large-scale European and International programmes and projects on advanced materials research and innovation (R&I). It will bring together numerous small and large R&I communities that are driving advances in materials innovation manifested across diverse value chains and industrial markets.
Several sessions are relevant to EU-MACE, in particular Session 3: Digital Innovation - Catalysing the Green & Digital Transition for Innovative Advanced Materials and Products, but the abstract submission to another session can also be considered. The applicant is invited to justify the session choice in his/her/their application.
More about Eligibility, Evaluation Criteria and other rules
Important dates:
A call for STSM is currently open until the July 15th, for STSM taking place from June 15th to September 15th, 2024.
Short-term scientific missions (STSM) are exchange visits between researchers involved in a COST Action, allowing a scientist to visit an institution or laboratory in a country different from the scientist home affiliation. The start and end date of a STSM must be within the active Grant Period of the Action. Their aim is to foster collaboration in excellent research infrastructures and share new techniques that may not be available in a participant’s home institution or laboratory.
STSM Grant priority is given to applicants whose scientific/research collaboration objectives resonates with that of EU-MACE: Create a new form of alliance across the entire innovation value chain of materials for clean energy applications by overcoming the fragmentation of materials research and technology development and via supporting informed decisions by diverse stakeholders. In other words, EU-MACE strives to build a systemic approach around MAPs for accelerated integration and scale-up production of advanced functional materials for low-carbon technologies. STSM promoting cross-border interactions between MAPs and cultivating/discovering of materials acceleration techniques by individual research groups, for example, are strongly encouraged.
More information on the STSM grants is found in Annexes 2 and 5 of the Annotated Rules for COST Actions.
Calls for Short Term Scientific Missions applications are periodically opened and published on our website. The applications must first be submitted on the e-COST website https://e-services.cost.eu/activity/grants/add, and follow the instructions within.
Applications must be eligible (see Annexes 2 and 5 of the Annotated Rules for COST Actions) and in line with the Action research topics.
For this grant period, the applications will be evaluated by the Grant Award coordination team on a monthly basis,
The selection will follow the COST policies on inclusiveness (gender, age, geography).