Marie Curie Actions: Inspiring Researchers - Imdea

PathfinderEARA-EST helped its Fellows develop their skills and chart theircareer path. ‘The three months I spent at the IAP in Paris, thanks tothe Marie Curie EARA-EST programme, were a great opportunityfor my PhD and the future of my research career,’ says Ms Vergani.‘During this period, I worked with very experienced and capablepeople, learning a lot and developing my research skills. I managedto extend my knowledge to other research fi elds and I establishedlinks with people working in several different domains.’She adds: ‘The fruitful collaboration built with the people I workedwith at the Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris (IAP) is still going on.It is also thanks to this experience that I obtained my presentpostdoc position in Paris.’Yuliana Goranova’s Fellowship, which took her to Germany andthe Netherlands, helped her gain valuable experience back homein her native Bulgaria and then land a good position in France.‘I spent a year in my home country, Bulgaria, where I had a sharedposition between two of the institutes of the Bulgarian Academyof Sciences in Sofi a. The experience in proposal writing I hadgained in both Munich and Leiden helped me to becomea member of a successful ongoing collaborative projectsupported by the Bulgarian Science Foundation,’ she describes.How was it for you?All in all, the EARA-EST Fellows came away with a sense of fruitfulgain from their Marie Curie experience. ‘It is diffi cult to say in justa few words what the EARA-EST programme means to me,’Ms Goranova admits. ‘But if I have to summarise it, it would be:top-level professional training and new research experience atone of the leading astronomical centres in Europe. This is coupledwith an excellent opportunity to extend and further develop mycommunication and project management skills, to meet newpeople, and it had a great impact on my future career.’Dr Micelotta sums it up as ‘pleasant and fruitful, and I think thatthe programme signifi cantly increased my future career prospectsin scientifi c research’.Project acronymEARA-ESTFull project titleEuropean Association for Research in Astronomy –Early-Stage TrainingType of grantTraining NetworkBudgetEUR 2 765 617Duration of project01-09-2004 - 31-08-2008Scientific disciplinePhysicsLead partnerRobert Mochkovitch/Chantal Le VaillantInstitut d’Astrophysique de Paris98 bis Bd AragoFR-75014 ParisE-mail: mochko@iap.fr - vaillant@iap.frTel. +33 1 44 32 81 87 // +33 1 44 32 80 59 // Fax +33 1 44 32 80 01Other partnersInstitute of Astronomy, United Kingdom -Instituto di Astronomia de Canarias (IAC), Spain - Leiden Observatory,Netherlands - Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik (MPA), Germany159