Health Research Board

Marie Curie COFUND Action

As part of the 7^th Framework Programme (FP7) the European Commission published a new Call in November 2007 under the Marie Curie Action: ‘Co-funding of Regional, National and International Programmes (COFUND)’. The aim of this co-funding action was to encourage existing or new regional and national programmes to support trans-national mobility, as well as to reinforce existing international programmes. Mobility of researchers has often been hampered due to many issues such as lack of financial incentives to travel, difficulties with pension transferability, challenges with moving family members and uncertainty over reintegration after the period of mobility.

HRB supporting Researcher Mobility 

The Health Research Board has been successfully and competitively offering post-doctoral fellowships every year since 1993 and has always encouraged fellows to avail of training and development abroad. To build on this, the HRB has successfully secured a contribution from the European Commission under this COFUND action to establish a new HRB/Marie Curie Postdoctoral Mobility Fellowship scheme. These three-year fellowships, open to post-doctoral researchers in any health-related discipline, will enable candidates to train and conduct research for a period of two years in any sponsor institution abroad on a research project of their choice followed by a mandatory reintegration period of one year back in Ireland. The fellowships will provide excellent conditions to successful candidate. The HRB wishes to award up to four of these fellowships in 2009.

New Post-doctoral fellowship scheme

This new fellowship scheme, along with the existing HRB Post-doctoral fellowship scheme, will form part of the HRB's strategic contribution to the delivery of the SSTI objective to increase the number of post-doctoral researchers and world class research teams in Ireland by 2013 and it is constructed in such a way as to remove the existing challenges and barriers to trans-national mobility for researchers.

Details of the call for proposals will be published on this website in the 'Grants' section.