The researchers are part of the Martí i Franquès COFUND Fellowship Programme which is jointly funded by the European Union. The call for applications is open from 20 March to 20 May 2018

As part of the Martí i Franquès COFUND Fellowship Programme (MFP-COFUND), the URV has opened the call for applications for 28 new predoctoral research fellowships in different research areas. This is the second edition of the MFP-COFUND programme. In the first edition, 22 candidates of 16 nationalities were selected, after a selection process with more than 300 people. The first doctoral students have already joined research groups of the URV, distributed in 11 departments, where they carry out their doctoral theses.

The fellowships are jointly funded by the European Union through the Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions programme, which is contributing four million euros to the programme. The URV will allocate another four million euros so that 50 predoctoral researchers can be contracted between 2017 and 2018. Moreover, the programme is supported by the Fundació Catalunya-La Pedrera, the IRTA and Banco Santander.

The initiative will attract and headhunt young, talented researchers with guaranteed international experience because candidates who wish to apply may not have spent more than 12 months of the last three years living in Spain (as of 31 July 2018). The reason for this is to promote mobility by encouraging applications from foreign students with master’s degrees or Spanish researchers who have lived abroad for more than two out of the last three years and to give them the opportunity to develop their research careers at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili. The candidates will receive multidisciplinary and cross-sector training thanks to the collaboration of more than 30 organisations that support the initiative.

The candidates will first be assessed by a committee consisting of external evaluators and then the three best candidates for each fellowship will be interviewed by a URV selection panel before one of them is awarded the fellowship. Education, research accomplishments, professional experience, motivation and references will all be evaluated.

The URV is the first public university in Spain and the only one in Catalonia to receive such funding. Furthermore, it is one of only nine Spanish institutions to receive this distinction during the first three calls issued by the COFUND predoctoral programme. The call for applications is open from 20 March to 20 May 2018. The candidates will start their three-year contracts in October 2018.

More information: Martí i Franquès COFUND Fellowship Programme