Pradeep Eranti
Fernanda Bajanca
Pradeep Eranti
Lidia Natalia Trusilewicz
Any support for ITN Early Stage Researchers lockdowned due to COVID?
Dear Marie-Curie Fellows,
I want to ask for your help.
I’m an ERC stationed in Rome, so, long story short – my work plan (as plans of many others ERCs) got severely disrupted by the COVID-outbreak. And my contract ends in like two months.
Ok, what I’m trying to understand – is how this is handled in other ITNs. There is not a lot of information out there on what are the guidelines from ERA on how to handle this. The best thing I’ve found is:
In brief it says that 1. The projects are extendable, but 2. the maximum grant amount remains the same 3. However, the beneficiaries may allocate some amounts from research, training and networking unit costs to maintain the salary of the researchers.
I tried to talk about this with our project coordinator, but he replied that the salary budget is a way larger than training budget, and, thus, he doesn’t believe “it will take me far”. My impression is, however, that at least 50% of that budget should have been left (which is a big sum!).
So, I wonder which practice is undertaken in other consortiums? Is someone out there following this path and how is it implemented? Knowing of any cases out there – would help me a lot!
Thank you!
Marina
2 Comments
Dear Marina,
you may be aware, but the salary you receive in Italy is probably less than half of the 'cost' of your contract, i.e. of the monthly amount contributed by the EC that is converted into an employment contract. I was in Italy with an IF rather than an ITN, but I believe it is the general case : a bit more than half of the total amount provided by the EC (or any funding source) goes to national social contributions, e.g. health insurance, unemployment, pension...
Thus if your salary was, for example, €2000/month net, it would 'cost' at least €4000/month. A two month extension would therefore require at least €8000 in funds to be available. I don't know how much is available in the training budget of an ITN, but that is a significant part of the research & training budget of an IF.
This may be what your project coordinator meant. In any case, it would be useful to know the numbers.
Best of luck, Daniel
Hi Nihal,
thanks so much for your reply!
I'm trying to understand what's happening around, to get some arguments on my side. And yes, you are right, I can't change the sitution for myself or other ESRs (who are stationed in Milan and are even more affected), just by learning about what's going on around. My intention is to get arguments and be prepared when we have a consortium meeting this week.
The decision to extend our project for 6 months was already announced, but ESRs were not invited on this boat. If this is a general practise, I'm suprised about how the situation is handled. Why to spend hundreds of thousands euros on someone's career and academic development, and than leave to swim or sink when something like this happen? It might sound a bit dramatic, but we all know that academia is very compretive and minus one project for a PhD's CV is a sensible loss.
Cheers,
Marina