POLONEZ BIS is a postdoctoral Fellowship Programme addressed to excellent experienced researchers interested in developing their professional skills within the stimulating environment of best research institutions in Poland. Open to candidates of any research background, discipline or nationality, the programme plans to recruit 120 scientists with a PhD degree or equivalent research experience, in 3 globally advertised calls. Selected in a transparent, merit-based evaluation process based on international peer-review, the fellows will be offered 2-year full-time employment contracts to work on projects combining basic research with a cross-sectoral secondment phase. Fellows will be independent in designing their own career development plan and will collaborate with outstanding supervisors at an academic or non-academic host institution of their choice. The programme guarantees excellent working conditions inclusive of a generous salary (€ 53,5 K a year, gross), an annual research grant (€ 50 K) and a comprehensive Research Leaders’ Training Programme enhancing both research-related and transferable skills. POLONEZ BIS will be managed by the National Science Centre (NCN), a government agency with over 8-years of experience in funding curiosity-driven research in Poland. To strengthen the programme’s impact, NCN will involve 4 project partner organisations: Careers Research and Advisory Centre to reinforce the fellows’ potential for professional development, Startup HUB Poland to provide insight into the non-academic sector and match fellows with appropriate secondment institutions, Polish Women Scientists Network to conduct Responsible Research and Innovation training as well as support fellows in communication of research results to the general public and the Interdisciplinary Center for Mathematical and Computational Modelling to advise on the choice of appropriate Open Access and Open Data tools to disseminate research results to the scientific community.

POLONEZ is a Fellowship Programme supporting international incoming researchers working in the broad field of research regardless of their nationality. It will be implemented by the National Science Centre (NCN), a government agency funding basic research in Poland. The NCN has already designed 11 funding schemes supporting researchers on every stage of their research career and regularly announces calls for proposals. The Centre is also involved in international funding initiatives, e.g. ERA-nets, JPIs. It follows a strictly bottom-up approach, allowing researchers to freely choose their research topic and host institution. POLONEZ, planned for 69 months, enables the NCN to implement 3 calls for proposals in order to select 90 fellows. It is targeted at experienced researchers who may apply for 12-24-month-fellowships in host institutions in Poland, both academic and non-academic, public or private. Apart from living, mobility and family allowances, they are offered a research grant which amounts to ca. € 4 200 per month, to cover the costs of a research project in a discipline freely chosen by the applicant. The fellows are also given an opportunity to participate in a variety of research and non-research trainings provided by the NCN and the host institution. One of the main goals of POLONEZ is to enhance incoming mobility in Poland. Although Polish host institutions offer an attractive research setting and high quality resources, fellowships in Poland attract fewer researchers. Also, many Polish researchers still seek temporary and permanent positions outside of Poland and Europe. Therefore, in order to counteract “brain drain,” build up a positive image of Polish research institutions and encourage foreign researchers to develop their careers in Poland, we offer them the opportunity to collaborate with the best Polish research organisations. POLONEZ thus paves the way for stronger international mobility in research and the integration of research communities.

International competition in Quantum Technologies has become a major challenge in the recent years. Europe has world-leading researchers in all Quantum Science areas: Communication; Sensing; Metrology; Computing; and, Simulation. However, it would be unrealistic to maintain such a strong position without considering the worldwide battle of communication launched by private and public companies on quantum technologies. To take advantage of such international competition, the InCoQFlag project proposes to provide a roadmap to international partnerships, which can be used by the EU to set up winning partnerships with countries that are massively investing in Quantum Science and Technologies. This would strengthen Europe’s position at an upper level, avoid brain drain and favour IP protection to support Member States’ economic growth. Within the InCoQFlag project, we will assess quantum standardization, infrastructures and IP protection issues. Furthermore, the necessity of an innovative framework to take advantage of Quantum Technologies is assessed by a global policy. Most of the InCoQFlag members are involved in the current QFlag coordination and support action. Hence, they will benefit from their experience in the QFlag project to elaborate new actions related to International Collaborations in the scope of targeted countries efficiently. These targeted countries are the USA, Japan and Canada. To this end, InCoQFlag will ensure a smooth communication and coordination between both projects in order to maximize their impact and favour European academic and public/private research organisations with their top-level counterparts outside Europe.

EOSC Focus will support the co-programmed EOSC Partnership in delivering its mission of establishing Open Science as the “new normal” and achieving the key objectives, which are outlined in the Memorandum of Understanding between the European Union and the EOSC Association (EOSC-A). EOSC Focus is a collaboration of eight Members of EOSC-A and the EOSC Association AISBL itself – the hub of key stakeholders in the European research environment, which provides insights on overarching themes important for the realisation of EOSC. The consortium demonstrates excellent complementarity across the diverse regions and stakeholder groups needed to ensure appropriate coverage of countries and stakeholders. EOSC Focus will provide an effective EOSC stakeholder forum; consolidate and enhance existing monitoring frameworks; identify strategic gaps to inform future iterations of the SRIA; develop and test resourcing models for a sustainable EOSC; implement the EOSC Rules of Participation; and collaborate with other EOSC-related projects, other partnerships, and international initiatives. EOSC Focus is organised into six work packages: WP 1 Project Coordination; WP 2 Stakeholder Engagement and Management; WP 3 SRIA Update and Technical Development; WP 4 Monitoring and Impact Assessment, WP 5 Sustainability of EOSC, and WP 6 Communication, Dissemination & Stakeholder Forum. The combination of these work packages will help the sometimes divergent activities of the broader stakeholder community to focus on the big goal of delivering EOSC. The impact of EOSC Focus will contribute to the increased availability, accessibility, and re-use of data. It will make research results more accessible for citizens; it will increase the quality and outreach of science and thus lead to more results from science and its innovation up-take.

EOSC Gravity will support the transition of the European co-programmed Partnership for EOSC into its new governance and funding framework. EOSC Gravity will leverage EOSC Focus engagement channels and facilities and establish new ones. Through open calls, EOSC Gravity will provide funding to support the EOSC Federation by encouraging the creation of EOSC Nodes, inter-project collaboration, and will support the revision of SRIA 2.0. The further evolution of the EOSC Federation will be charted through measures to monitor and report on EOSC Partnership KPIs and to establish a methodology to assess the impact of EOSC. What: EOSC Gravity will support the Partnership in its role of charting a continuous flow of up-to-date and accurate information on the status of EOSC and developing strategic recommendations through the SRIA to ensure that the Partnership transitions into a new governance and funding model post-2027. HOW: EOSC Gravity will mobilise and grow the broader EOSC community with outreach and engagement activities empowering stakeholders to further evolve the EOSC Federation; and will directly fund actions to support the creation of several EOSC Nodes. The EOSC Academy will be anchored to ensure an informed community has the expertise to foster EOSC-related activities at country and institution levels. Projects will collaborate and will feed their results into EOSC-A Task Forces. WHY: EOSC Gravity will pull the EOSC communities of stakeholders together to contribute to a smooth and effective transition from the Partnership to a new governance and funding framework for EOSC post-2027. Multi-stakeholder collaboration and dialogue which builds on EU and national investments in this area is needed for the future of EOSC as a federated infrastructure. WHO: The EOSC Gravity consortium is formulated as a lean grouping of skilled partners coordinated by EOSC-A, the EC’s partner in the EOSC Partnership and current coordinator of the EOSC Focus project.