Last month the COST Association organised four ‘COST Meets Researcher’ events in Palestine, Azerbaijan, Jordan, and Tunisia to raise awareness of the opportunities available to researchers in the NNCs as part of its aim to double NNC participation in COST Actions by the end of Horizon Europe.
The COST programme connects researchers and innovators from the countries neighbouring full COST Members. These countries are known as COST Near Neighbour Countries (NNC) and include Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Egypt, Jordan, Kosovo, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Russia*, Syria, and Tunisia.
COST Meets Researchers in Palestine, Azerbaijan, Jordan, and Tunisia
Participants in the four events discovered how to participate in COST Actions and heard directly from local researchers who have already participated in Actions.
Researchers from NNCs can be involved in a COST Action from the very beginning or can join an existing Action at any point during its lifetime. NNC researchers are also eligible for reimbursement if they would like to participate in or organise a Training School, Short-term Scientific Mission (STSM), conference, or another networking activity in the context of a COST Action. They can also access COST’s Inclusive Target Country (ITC) tools, such as ITC conference grants (these grants are aimed at young researchers & PhD students from ITCs to attend beneficial conferences that are not organised by a COST Action).
Furthermore, although researchers coming from COST’s Near Neighbour Countries cannot be the main proposer of a new COST Action, they can be a member of a proposing network as secondary proposers.
More information
Read more about COST global networking
Read more about the Open Call 2022
*As of 6 May 2022 until further notice, measures are taken to suspend cooperation with Russia for the execution of the COST Actions and COST activities. Amongst these measures, participation and eligibility of COST Action participants affiliated to a legal entity established in Russia are suspended for all COST Actions and COST activities.
This article was first published on 6 May by COST Association.
Receive our news bulletin each Tuesday & Thursday and news about bridging Europe’s east-west innovation gap twice a month in The Widening. 