organisation - the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência

RESEARCH
FUNDING AFFAIRS
Sheila Vidal Head
PhD in Physiology of Invertebrates, Paris Sud XI University, Orsay, France, 2004
Head of Service since 2008
The Research Funding Affairs team is responsible for the implementation of a
pre-award grant administration service. Its main goal is to increase the IGC’s
capacity to attract research funds and to improve direct fundraising by research
teams, and their scientific projects, for competitive calls launched by national,
international, public and private grant programmes.
FACILITY STAFF
Mariana Guerreiro (Assistant, left in August)
This team reports directly to the IGC Director, understands the different grant
financial policies and requirements and works in collaboration with researchers,
project managers and finance staff.
SERVICES INCLUDE:
1. Identifying, in a timely manner, calls for proposals that might interest the
IGC, evaluating the conditions and preferences for grant applications (eligibility,
deadlines, how to apply and prepare full proposals, filling-in forms
and web-pages, knowing how it works, what are the specific targets, what
is behind each call, etc) and disseminating these opportunities through by
several means: the Grant Information website, emails, meetings;
2. Supporting proposal development and submission, namely: arranging administrative
forms, host documents and signatures, assisting with scientific
proposal writing and budget;
3. Post-award negotiation with funding agencies of contracts and agreements;
4. Grant application training for research staff and graduate students.
In addition, this team also monitors the impact of the services offered through
the quantification of the following criteria: number of applications submitted,
secured grants and prizes, diversity of grant agencies and amounts raised.
In 2011 this team supported researchers in attracting 34 new external competitive
research grants (18: FCT; 3: EC-FP7; 14: other sources, FLAD, Fundação
Bial, Camara Municipal de Oeiras, Associação Viver a Ciência, PORLISBOA/QREN,
SPD/Novo Nordisk, Association for International Cancer & Wellcome Trust)
raising a total of 4.9million Euro.
The Research Funding Affairs’ responsibilities cease with contract signature and
after passing all grant information to the accounting department and researchers.
IGC ANNUAL REPORT ‘11
FACILITIES AND SERVICES
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