The core concept of these awards is of career development through mobility across borders and between sectors
EARLIER THIS month the European Commission celebrated the 50,000th Marie Curie Fellow.
These are highly prestigious awards to outstanding researchers for them to pursue their career in universities and laboratories across the world. The EU has funded fellowships for more than 30 years but it was only in 1996 that they were branded Marie Curie.
This was an apt name as Marie Curie (nee Sklodowska) was born in Poland and moved to France where she won two Nobel prizes, one in chemistry and one in physics. The much competed for fellowships are awarded to researchers at all stages of their careers from PhD student to senior professor. Applicants are free to choose the research area that can be anything from astronomy to zoology.
The core concept of these awards is that of research career development through mobility across borders and between sectors. There was a time where they were confined to mobility within Europe but the global nature of research is now well recognised and researchers can move to and from anywhere in the world.
There are a variety of schemes that are based on individual applications or from research groups in academia or enterprise. It also supports national funding agencies to create new schemes to promote international mobility.
The most popular enables a network of research groups from companies and universities to take on PhD students from abroad. The network provides them with a highly structured education and research training. They spend part of their time with companies and have access to skills training.
Over the current cycle of Marie Curie funding (2007-2013), more than 10,000 PhD students will be supported. The Marie Curie programme was supporting structured PhD’s before this was done nationally and is now seen as the way forward.
For a ceremony in Brussels, 25 current fellows were chosen to receive a special award and among them were four from Ireland. Azadeh Attari is a graduate of the University of Tehran and is now studying for a PhD at UCD on the reliability of concrete bridges.
Emma Seale is an Earth Sciences graduate from UCC and is now a Marie Curie Fellow in an SME at Daithi O’Murchu Research Station in West Cork. She is working on a collaborative project using marine algae as biomass for biofuel between SME’s, and university partners from Ireland, the UK and Turkey.
Brothers Alan and Steven Davy are computer science PHD graduates from Waterford Institute of Technology. Both will be working at the University of Barcelona on wireless network technologies (Alan) and resource sharing by Internet Service Providers (Steven). They will spend two years in Spain and are then funded for a third year to bring back their expertise to WIT.
The strong Irish presence at this conference represents our great success in this programme. Ireland has the highest number of Marie Curie Fellows per capita of researcher of all EU Member States. During the period 2002-2006 Ireland secured more than €55m for researchers in academia and industry. Since 2007 the total to date is €43m.
These funds have gone to researchers in a wide range of organisations including all of our universities and many institutes of technology; a wide range of companies from the small (eg, Green Biofuels Ireland Ltd) to the large (DePuy Ireland).
Originally these fellowships were to promote mobility around Europe to encourage more collaboration. Now they are an integral component of EU policy on creating a free movement of knowledge across Europe. They bridge education and research, and reach out to industry.
Marie Curie Actions are a strong enabler for at least three of the major EU policy flagships – the Innovation Union, Youth on the Move and the Agenda for New Skills and Jobs.
From a national perspective they have enabled many researchers to pursue their career in science, technology and innovation. They are part of transforming Europe into a highly competitive knowledge- based society. They support the reversal of the “brain-drain”, and attract leading talent from all around the world (Marie Curie Actions have already brought back more than 2,000 highly experienced researchers to Europe).
These fellowships are highly competitive and require great dedication on the part of the researchers. In the words of Marie Curie: “Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.”
Conor O’Carroll is research director in the Irish Universities Association, Conor.ocarroll@iua.ie