With “Seed Money“, Eucor – The European Campus, of which Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is a member, has set up its very first own significant funding instrument and will award 300,000 Euros annually from 2018 to 2020. The goal is to finance new cross-border projects that foster the development of Eucor – The European Campus and its scientific network. Two lines of funding are planned: “Research and Innovation” and “Teaching”. Each year, between five and ten projects will receive a maximum of 60,000 Euros each.
“As a scientific community in the Upper-Rhine area, Eucor – The European Campus, enables us to further intensify the excellent collaboration, which has grown over many years, with our partner universities in Basel, Freiburg, Mulhouse, and Straßburg,” says Professor Thomas Hirth, Vice President of KIT. With “Seed Money”, attractive start-up support is now available for promising cooperation ideas in the fields of research, teaching, and innovation.”
“We want to specifically fund bottom-up initiatives and leverage the innovation potential existing at the European Campus even more,” says Prof. Dr. Hans-Jochen Schiewer, president of Eucor – The European Campus and rector at the University of Freiburg. “I am very pleased that the Eucor confederation, for the first time, has made additional resources available for funding projects at the various European Campus universities.” The initial funding will help support the emergence of new cross-border course offerings and research projects.”
Established university instructors as well as researchers at the member universities of Eucor – The European Campus are eligible to apply. At least two universities from two different countries must be involved in the project. The maximum funding period is 18 months. The idea is that projects in the “Research and Innovation” category will receive subsequent funding from national or European institutions thereafter.
Project selection for the first financing round will take place starting in the fall of 2017. Financing will begin on January 1, 2018. From the beginning of July 2017, online applications are accepted via the Eucor Website.
For more information, please visit: http://www.eucor-uni.org/de/seed-money
Background Information on Eucor – The European Campus
The European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation (EGTC), “Eucor – The European Campus”, was created against the backdrop of a long standing cooperation between the universities on the Upper Rhine. In December 2015, the five member universities – the Universities of Basel, Freiburg, Haute-Alsace, and Strasbourg and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) signed the founding documents in order to create a legal entity for cross-border research and teaching. With the expertise and potential of 15,000 researchers and 11,000 PhD candidates as well as 115,000 students, the alliance expands into a science and research area without walls and borders and with an international reach.
Being “The Research University in the Helmholtz Association”, KIT creates and imparts knowledge for the society and the environment. It is the objective to make significant contributions to the global challenges in the fields of energy, mobility, and information. For this, about 10,000 employees cooperate in a broad range of disciplines in natural sciences, engineering sciences, economics, and the humanities and social sciences. KIT prepares its 22,800 students for responsible tasks in society, industry, and science by offering research-based study programs. Innovation efforts at KIT build a bridge between important scientific findings and their application for the benefit of society, economic prosperity, and the preservation of our natural basis of life. KIT is one of the German universities of excellence.