MSCA2015 - COFUND · Luxembourg EU Presidency Conference 2015 on MSCA COFUND, 10-11 December 2015

Luxembourg EU Presidency Conference 2015 on MSCA COFUND, 10-11 December 2015

The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg had the Council of the EU Presidency starting on July 1st until December 31st 2015, and consequently was in charge of hosting the annual MSCA Conference in Luxembourg in December 2015. The overarching theme of the MSCA Conference, that took place in the city of Luxembourg on the 10th and 11th of December 2015, was “COFUND: Creating Synergies to fuel Researchers Careers”. The 2015 MSCA conference on COFUND highlighted the synergies supporting and enhancing doctoral training, researchers’ career development, inter-sectoral cooperation, interdisciplinarity, international cooperation, as well as mobility, within the European Union research landscape. The MSCA conference targeted the following audiences: • Experts and stakeholders in the field of research funding and researchers’ careers pathways, both from public and private institutions. • Representatives of institutions who have been actively involved as hosts under COFUND • Researchers who have been beneficiaries from the COFUND schemes • National contact points for COFUND • Representatives from the European Commission as well as from Ministries of member states A total of 150 participants from 30 countries participated in the conference. The full list of participants and the conference programme are added wtih the final report. As demonstrated by the good practice examples in the session, COFUND achieved a multiplying effect and has changed participating institutions by helping the programmes making progress during the entire implementation process (“learning by doing”). It has had an impact on the selected researchers’ careers, as evidenced by career tracking studies and end-of-grant surveys. All the programmes have developed policies to deal with diversity and engage with the non-academic sector. The main conference conclusions are published in the final report that will be published in April 2016 on the conference website www.msca2015.lu. It will also be sent to all participants and widely disseminated through the media and distribution lists such as Euraxess and the EU H2020 MSCA and ERC Programme Committees.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union