Call presentation
NeuroMarseille institute wishes to promote scientific exchanges, encourage the emergence of new collaborative projects within Marseille’s neuroscience community and to support technical platforms.
The institute constitutes a component of Aix-Marseille University (AMU) supported by AMIDEX funding. The use of funding is therefore governed by AMIDEX financial rules and subject to evaluation. In this context, NeuroMarseille institute opens this call titled “Innovative and Collaborative Research Grants “PLUS” in Neuroscience”, in order to promote collaboration between people involved in Neuroscience research (see “Applicants” below) willing to start new innovative and high-quality projects in collaboration with a technical platform. This grant will support operating cost for the project (see eligible expenses) and the purchase of new equipment for the platform in order to offer new and/or better tools for the success of the project. This equipment must be useful for a larger use beyond the described project.
Each project will be granted up to 20 k€ for the research part (same criteria as for the Innovative and Collaborative Research Grants). Then, an extra envelope up to 20 k€ will be added to allow the purchase of equipment for the platform. Partner 1 will be in charge of managing the financial aspect of the research part of the project. Financial support for the equipment will be directly given to the platform. Please note that the Partner in charge of the financial management must belong to a lab which has a financial manager certified for AMU’s funding administration.
This work has received support from the French government under the Programme “Investissements d’Avenir”, Initiative d’Excellence d’Aix-Marseille Université via AMidex funding NeuroMarseille AMX-19-IET-004, and NeuroSchool ANR-17-EURE-0029
Eligibility Criteria
Applicants: Personnel belonging to Research Units (UMR) affiliated to NeuroMarseille can answer this call, including researchers (CR, MCU, DR, Pr, PU), engineers (AI, IE, IR), as well as post-docs and PhD students.
Projects must involve at least two Partners who do not belong to the same UMR: if there are only two partners, one must be an engineer of the platform. If there are more than two partners, at least one must be an engineer of the platform.
In case of a collaboration with one or more partner(s) not belonging to NeuroMarseille, the funding of the “scientific part” will only be half of the maximum allocation. In case of a collaboration involving 2 NeuroMarseille partners and one or more partner(s) not belonging to NeuroMarseille, the allocation will remain whole.
Personnel who obtained a NeuroMarseille Collaborative Research Grant in 2020 is not eligible.
Only one application to a 2021-NeuroMarseille’s grant per candidate.
Research program: the research program must be particularly innovative and should not represent the continuation of an ongoing project. Priority will be given to novelty and innovation; preliminary data are therefore not compulsory. The evaluated criteria will be the program feasibility (equipment, collaborations, personnel involved, etc…), the scientific quality of the project as well as scientific quality of the participating teams, with a special focus on their complementarity. The applicants must demonstrate that the equipment requested for the platform will be useful for the project and beyond the project’s duration and goals.
Eligible expenses: detailed budget must be attached to the project proposal following the tables given on the Application form. Eligible expenses for the “scientific part” include: operating costs, undergraduate traineeship grants if needed and small equipment for the running of the project.
Eligible expenses for the “PLUS part” (platform part) are exclusive to finance or co-finance the purchase of a piece of equipment (either a single piece of equipment or a sum of materials making up a single piece of equipment) that can be used by several teams. In the case of co-financing, contributions from other sources must in no case exceed 10 000€.
Application modalities
Submission: the project submission deadline is December 06, 2020, at 23:59. Applicants must use the Application Form provided on the NeuroMarseille’s website.
Evaluation: the Scientific Committee, composed of NeuroMarseille’s neuroscientists with the possible support of national experts, will evaluate and select the projects. The evaluations will be sent by e-mail to the applicants by the end of the 3rd week of January 2021.
Terms of engagement: it is mandatory to mention the support of NeuroMarseille in all scientific publications and communications in relation to the project:
“This work was supported by a grant from NeuroMarseille (#AMX-19-IET-004)”
The grantees involved in the project could be asked to present their findings during the events organized by NeuroMarseille.
Results
We are pleased to present the laureates of the ICR Grant Plus grants:
- Antoine DE CHEVIGNY (INMED) and Christophe LETERRIER (INP)and Neuro-Cellular Imaging Service (NCIS) from INP
- Myriam CAYRE (IBDM) and Nathalie Lorenzo (LNC) and the Rodent Behavior Platform from LNC
- Virginie CALLOT (CRMBM) and Franck VIDAL (LNC) and the CRMBM-CEMEREM platform
- Corinne BEURRIER (IBDM) and Eduardo GASCON GONZALO (INT) and the NeuroBioTools Platform (NeuroVir) from INT
- EUSEBIO Alexandre (APHM/INT) and TSVETKOV Philipp (INP) and the Interactome Timone Platform (PINT) of PFNT from INP
We congratulate them on the quality of their innovative and collaborative project. Each project involves two laboratories and a NeuroMarseille platform.