Objective of the call

The action "Staff Exchanges" (SE) promotes innovative international, inter-sectoral and interdisciplinary collaboration in research and innovation through exchanging staff and sharing knowledge and ideas at all stages of the innovation chain. The scheme fosters a shared culture of research and innovation that welcomes and rewards creativity and entrepreneurship and helps turn ideas into innovative products, services or processes. SE can address three dimensions of mobility: inter-sectoral, international and interdisciplinary. It is open to research, technical, administrative and managerial staff supporting R&I activities.

Structure

The SE action funds short-term international and inter-sectoral exchanges of staff members involved in research and innovation activities of participating organisations. The aim is to develop sustainable collaborative projects between different organisations from the academic and non-academic sectors (in particular SMEs), based in Europe and beyond. Exchanged staff benefit from new knowledge, skills and career development perspectives, while participating organisations increase their research and innovation capacities. A secondment must last between 1 and 12 months. SE exploits complementary competencies of the partners and enables networking activities, organisation of workshops and conferences to facilitate sharing of knowledge, new skills acquisition and career development for staff members.

Secondments within the EU Member States or Horizon Europe Associated Countries must be between different sectors (academic and non-academic), except for interdisciplinary secondments, which must be limited to a maximum of one-third of the total months spent under the action. They must be between different countries and must be performed on a full-time basis. The partners contribute to the implementation of a joint R&I project by seconding and/or hosting eligible staff members. Such a project must explore activities that can be based on previous work but should go beyond and generate or strengthen long-term collaborations.

Proposals will be evaluated by one of eight 'main evaluation panels': Chemistry (CHE), Social Sciences and Humanities (SOC), Economic Sciences (ECO), Information Science and Engineering (ENG), Environment and Geosciences (ENV), Life Sciences (LIF), Mathematics (MAT), Physics (PHY). Each panel establishes a ranked list.

Eligible applicants

a)Legal entities
Any legal entity from the academic and non-academic sectors (industry, business, government, civil society organisations, hospitals, etc.) established in EU Member States or Horizon Europe associated countries.

b)Individuals
Secondments are open for researchers at any career stage (from doctoral candidates to postdoctoral researchers) and administrative, managerial and technical staff supporting R&I activities under the action. They must be actively engaged in or linked to research and/or innovation activities for at least one month (full-time equivalent) at the sending institution, before the secondment. The secondment of a staff member can be split into several stays with one or several beneficiaries or associated partners.

Partnership criteria

The consortium must be submitted by at least three legal entities, independent of each other and established in at least three different countries. At least two must be located in an EU Member State or Horizon Europe associated country. If all partners are from the same sector (i.e. either only academic or only non-academic), there must be at least one partner from a non-associated third country.

In case of interest, please click on "m'interessa" and we will contact you.