Eutopia updates (11.10.2019)

The grant agreement for the EUTOPIA pilot project has been signed by the lead of the project, the University of Ljubljana and the European Commission. On 26 September 2019, an application for the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Co-funding of regional, national and international programmes was submitted with all EUTOPIA partners. The EUTOPIA Science and Innovation Fellowship (EUTOPIA-SIF) will aim to train post-doctoral researchers with a high degree of entrepreneurial and innovation awareness to be part of the future generation of Science and Innovation leaders in Europe. The results will be known in February 2020. 

• Warwick and UPF are meeting in Barcelona on the 15th October for a meeting of the leads and co-leads of WP6 International to start the project management planning. A wider WP6 meeting will be planned for November/December. 

• On 23-24 October a conference is being held in Rome in the framework of the European project EUniQ. It aims at ‘Developing a European Approach for Comprehensive QA of (European) University Networks.’ The consortium is comprised of eight quality assurance (QA) agencies, six ministries, EUA, ESU and ENQA. EUTOPIA will be represented by Katja Žibert Kamšek from the University of Ljubljana and Steven Van Luchene from VUB. More information about the project can be found HERE. 

• On 7 and 8 November the European Commission organises a meeting with representatives from all 17 selected European University alliances. On 7 November the president or their representative of each EUTOPIA university will participate in a high-level meeting and on 8 November Tjaša Nabergoj, Matjaž Krajnc, and Nikki Muckle will take part in a management meeting. No concrete agenda has been provided yet. 

• The consortium meeting which was planned at the end of October in Brussels will not take place due to agenda issues. After the official start of the project, a meeting will be organised in Ljubljana in January with the EUTOPIA academic leads and vice presidents. 

• On 8 October work package Education and work package Research and Innovation met in Brussels. They discussed the timing and related budgets of the activities in the upcoming months. By having parallel and joint sessions, synergies were  

• On 9 October a delegation of the University of Gothenburg including deans, pro deans and the pro vice chancellor of research visited the VUB. They discussed topics of collaboration and EUTOPIA. 

• Warwick would like to invite researchers from across EUTOPIA to apply for a new visiting fellowship scheme: Fernandes Fellowships. These Fellowships will allow those in research, tenure-track or early academic positions to undertake a three-month visit to Warwick (possibly split over two or three visits) in order to develop long-term research collaborations. Fellows, who must have less than 10 years postdoctoral experience, will receive a stipend of £2,000 per month; travel costs of up to £1,000; and research, support and training costs of up to £3,000. Applications can be submitted at any time and will be reviewed on a monthly basis until funds are fully allocated. Warwick would be very grateful if you could advertise this opportunity across your institutions. If you, or other colleagues, have questions about this scheme please contact Mike Haymes (m.haymes@warwick.ac.uk) at Warwick. 

• Call for course proposals open to EUTOPIA members: The School of Economics and Business of the University of Ljubljana invites academics to submit course proposals on Bachelor or Master level for the 21st Ljubljana Summer School Take the Best from East and West which will take place in Ljubljana from 6-24 July 2020. If you have an idea for an interesting summer course and you want to teach in an international classroom by using interactive and innovative modes of teaching, you are welcome to send your application with up to 3 different course proposals. We welcome proposals for Bachelor courses (6 ECTS) and Master courses (7 ECTS). Course proposals should be submitted online by 11 November 2019. More information here. 

• International conference “Brain tumors: From bench to clinic”: We are pleased to invite the EUTOPIA community to register for the international conference “Brain tumors: From bench to clinic” which will be held on the 26th of November 2019 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The conference is organized by the Medical Center of Molecular Biology, Institute of Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ljubljana and the National Institute of Biology. The conference is organised in the scope of the Interreg TRANS-GLIOMA “New glioblastoma therapies via a translational cross border research platform” project. The main goal of the project is promoting transfer of innovative medical techniques in the oncology field, with focus on glioblastoma, and increasing cooperation among research institutions, clinics, universities and companies. Register here: https://braintumorsfrombenchtoclinic.com/registration