The information day was dedicated to the direct-access EU calls which provide funding for the training and knowledge exchange of outstanding researchers through cross-border and industry-academy mobility of researchers. The budget of the MSCA programme has increased by EUR 2.9 billion for the 2018-2020 period so the success rate of Hungarian researchers and institutions is expected to rise in these calls.

In her presentation Nóra Jeney, MSCA National Contact Point described the novelties of the programme, including in particular the increased budget, the individual fellowships in part-time arrangement, and the so-called “Widening” fellowships which foster the mobility of individual researchers to countries that are performing less successfully in research, development and innovation. Speakers at the event included Rodrigo Gutierrez Dominguez from the European Commission’s Research Executive Agency who gave a detailed presentation on the MSCA-RISE programme which promotes cooperation between industry and academy and between research institutions from the EU and third countries in the form of joint projects and staff exchange. To encourage participants he said that the success rate of consortium proposals in the RISE programme is 26% which is relatively high among Horizon 2020 calls. Subsequently, Dr. Cristina Monsone, expert assessor for many RISE calls, highlighted the most important points of project proposals that are primarily checked and evaluated by the assessors, then Dr. Zsófia Keresztes, Hungarian partner of a winning consortium talked about the challenges of creating the joint project, establishing the consortium and implementing the project in practice.