Ramon y Cajal Fellowship

Hi!

Now I'm joining a Ramón y Cajal fellow, but it took me 4 years to get it after my IEF. Nowadays this grant is very competitive. About consolidation after 5 years... it is "optional", not mandatory for your host institution.  It basically depends on the center you join. Almost all universities consolidate RyCs if they get i3 certificate and also habilitation as Profesor Contratado Doctor (or Titular de Universidad) in the 4th year of the grant. In non-univeristy research centers i.e. CSIC, research network from Autonomies, hospitals, etc. it can be more difficult to get a permanent position after finishing the grant.

hope this helps...

Dear Luis,

Many thanks for your information. It seems Universities are interested in offering a permanent position if you are able to get the "i3 certificate" and also habilitation. This is a good news! It is not easy to find these type of programmes in EU and the RyC seems to give some good opportunities! 

Many thanks again (and all the best for your future career!!)

Silvia

Hello. Any permanent position is very difficult in Spanish universities at the moment. 

Complutense, where I work, has tried to provide some regulation to secure contracts after a Ramón y Cajal fellowship. The last call open for Ramón y Cajal was 2017. You can find some of the regulations in the BOE (Boletin Oficial del Estado) where all public contacts are specified and advertised. You can download some of them from this webpage https://www.ucm.es/rc80-17

Hello,

I never tried with RyC contracts but, from what I know from my colleagues at IREC (CSIC), I think it is a very good opportunity for becoming a senior researcher or professor. If I'm not wrong, a RyC contract means 5 years of research employment. During that period your CV should obviously improve a lot so that you would naturally have much better chances for a permanent position than those that did not have RyC.

One of my colleagues was IEF MC fellow and now is RyC.

Hope it helps.

Cheers,

Javier

Hi,

Certainly the RyC are very very competitive. In psychology they are practically impossible for those of us with a more psychosocial orientation. Theoretically, the optionality of the opening of a permanent place is true ... buuuuuuut for a few years if the fellow gets the I3 certificate at the end and the university does not open the place, they do not receive the 100000 euros with which the hiring is subsidized. So, even if it is optional, the universities do not want to lose that money. Before, they obtained that money without having to materialize the hiring and the government, in one of the few good things that they have done in the last years, forced the hiring to be done effective to pay the last 100K euros.

Best regards,

Fran

Hi All,

I take advantage of this discussion to ask how you think that is the best and correct manner to present the Marie-Curie IEF in your CV when apply for contracts as Ramon y Cajal. Can be it classified as research grant?

P.S. I work in the molecular biology field

Thanks in advanced.

Best regards,

Gaetano

Dear silvia,

I am a former Marie Curie and Ramony Cajal Fellow that just got a permanent possition in Spain as "Profesor Contratado Doctor", which is somehow equivalent to Assistant Professor. From my experience i can tell you a few things:

1. YES, a Ramon y Cajal Fellowship is probably the best chance you have now to get a permanent position in Spain for people coming from abroad BUT it is a chance, it is not something for sure.

2. When a Spanish institution hires a Ramon y Cajal, it has a recommendation (but is not compulsory) to offer a permanent position at the end of the contract to the fellow. This is good but it also has some consequences that you must be aware of. Some of them are:

3. By law, Spanish universities have to keep a 15% of the total annual offer for professor positions for people who has FINISHED a Ramon y Cajal fellowship with a I3 certificate. That means that if the university is offering that year 9 professor positions in total, one MUST be offered for people who has finished a RyC, BUT it does not mean that the position is giveno you t. The position will be open to any other RyC with a I3 certificate with experience in the research field, and to be allowed to run for that position you need to fulfill two requirements: 1) You need to get the certificate from ANECA to be a "Professor Contratado Doctor", and 2) you need to pass the productivity assesment in your 4th year of RyC to get your IC3 qualification. If you fail to get any of those two requirements, even if the position is open, you will not be allowed to run for it. Don´t worry, anybody who gets a RyC, just by keeping the smae level of quality and productivity will get a I3 certificate, BUT the same is not true for the certificate to be a Profesor Contratado Doctor.

4. In non-university instituions (like CSIC or INIA) they can fulfill the legal requirements just by offering ONE position for many RyC finishing that year, and that is what makes tougher to get the permanent position in non-university institutions. Same thing in big univeristies (in Madrid and Barcelona, mostly) where several RyC finish they contracts at the same time but only 1-2 positions are open.

5. RyC positions are VERY competitive. If you dont have at least 20-25 papers (it depends on fields, but in environmental sciences is like that) it is not worth trying. Better thing is to see the CVs from last year awardees, and see if you can match their CVs.

If you get an RyC fellowship, my advices to turn it into a permanent position are:

1) CHOOSE SMALL UNIVERSITY: it may seem contradictory, but if you go to a small univesity, your chances to get a permanent position are higher, because by law they will be forced to offer a position, and if you are the only RyC in that univeristy who finshed his/her contract that year, well, they are forced to open a position in your research area so you can apply. In a big university or research institution, they may offer 1-2 position for 5-6 people finshing, and because the positions are linked to research areas, the competition BEFORE the position is open to name the research area can get ugly.

2) TEACH: you will have a maximum of 80 hours/year you can teach, but they are crucial to get your certification for "Profesor Contratado Doctor". If you don´t teach, you don´t get the certification, period.

3) NEGOTIATE EARLY: when you are in your 4th year of a RyC (of 5), make sure that your boss and your department´s head supports you to negotiate with your university vice-president for human resource/professors/ equivalent, to let them know that you are close to finish your contract and if they are forced to open a position, it will be offered in your research area.

4) PREPARE YOUR APPLICATION: once the position is offered in your field area, it is open to ANYBODY, it is not for you. You will have to pass a public test consisting in two tests: one is about your teaching & research proposal & CV (about 1 hour presentation) and if you pass that, the second test is a 1-hour lecture on a topic of your choice. It may happen that you are the only candidate, but YOU DON´T KNOW until a few weeks before the test. The person with the best marks in both tests will get the position. So do your best, in case something else decides to run for the same position. You will need at least 3 months (6-9 better) to write the documents for your teaching and research proposals.

Hope it helps!

Best regards,

Juan

Thanks Juan for the detailed information and response. I am also a former Marie Curie and Ramon y Cajal fellow. I would only add one point to Juan´s very complete and correct points. I would say start the negotiation early, I would not leave it till year 4. The situation is also quite distinct for different fields, so try to get information specific for your field and the statistics there, in the last years . I don´t know if they still exist and/ or if still active but there was also an RyC association that , if they are, can provide you with more information. Good luck!

Dear all,

Many thanks for all you comments and support and a big thank you to Juan Blanco for his details that I found particularly relevant. RyC seems a good chance, definitively. In the intenrational academic landscape, opportunities like the RyC are very rare. For that reason, I asked more information and details.  I wanted to make sure I understood all the points of the fellowship, correctly.

I hope this I3 certificate/ habilitation is possible to obtain also when you are an International researcher (without a Spanish citizenship).

You helped me al lot, thank you again!

Regarding the question posed by Gaetano Verde, I think you should specify that you are a MC Fellow and you should give some more details about your project  (e.g. link to the CORDIS page) 

...my background is in Psychology... in Biology things can be presented differently!

Silvia

Dear Juan,

many thanks again for your clarification. It is very important what you said and what you suggested. I will keep in mind all this infiormation and in case...I will contact you again!

Have a good day

Silvia

Dear all,

I can response to the MSCA IF question as I only know the Ramon y Cajal call of ears. For the formally purposes we enjoy a function of 'Researcher of MSCA-IF grant', but it will all depends on the established work plan and activities. If you ever had a chance to consult other applications, each fellow context and starting situation itself varies quite a bit. In one of the MSCA seminaries/workshops it was also told that 2 years of an IF in mostly cases is not enough time for a R2 to become a full PI (and less R3 for obvious reasons). Others describe it as a postdoctoral, so it is truly individual after all, this call in particular. 

The selection of the MSCA projects is performed on the basis of the award criteria, 'excellence', 'impact' and 'quality and efficiency of the implementation', which I understand as a competitive (not discretionary) basis. 

In practise, I know by experience that many academic positions in Spain are already taken before their respective call is mandatorily announced. Well, I believe you can always give it a try, who knows? Which part of those researchers who have emigrated due to the so-called 'crisis' could 'return' along these years anyway...? 

Regarding the ANECA acreditiation make sure you have all the appropriate documents as in case of a negative response one must wait 6 months to be allowed to apply for it newly in the ministry. There are also local accrediting agencies if one is destined to a particular Community (http://www.aneca.es/Agencias-de-las-Comunidades-Autonomas). Not all of them will have the time restriction. Good luck. 

Best wishes to all,

Lidia

Dear Lidia,

Many thanks for your suggestions!

….Just a brief comment about what you said. I agree with your point. MC fellows are not always considered in the same manner across Institutions (this is only my personal experience); in some cases a MC fellow is considered as a post-doc while in other cases they are considered as a more senior researcher… It is incredible.

I noticed a big difference in relation with the position previously held by the MC fellow (at least, this is my experience). In my Institutions, there are 3 MC fellows at the moment: one is me (and I previously was a post-doc in Italy) and other two MC fellows (from Sweden and Russia) who are associate professors in their country. The contract is the same for all three, of course. Despite that, I perceived some differences, at the beginning.

For example, when they arrived, the University asked them to prepare an Inaugural lesson. This was not my case.  In add, they were much more autonomous in managing financial resources than me, at the beginning.  After some months, I pointed out this difference and thighs were slightly improved!

I am referring to small things…not substantial differences!! However, even small differences may have an impact when you want to promote yourself within the Institution or you want to propose other projects.

Probably, we should highlight this divergence at the EU level during the next MCAA Conference in 2019!

Bye

Hello,

I was actually refferring to a question appeard up here on how best to describe the MSCA fellowship in Curriculum, not precisely how it is considered by the others - in the mind of the idea that one never put experience or competences that one does not possess. The main MSCA programme spine is similar but each of us did or had different functions and range of competences as foreseen in each project. 

For any issues related to the employment contract, the national law of where the host institution is placed is applied, not nationality or nationalities of the fellow as they could be different as well. 

As it was righlty noticed elsewhere, the MCAA is the closest thing to unions in our case so we should always work to strengthen it for its good.

Best wishes to all,

Lidia