Environmental Change Institute, NUI Galway
Prof John Simmie
"Marie Curie funding is absolutely vital for those researchers, like ourselves, who are outside the 'golden circle' of biotechnology and ICT which has been the norm in Ireland of late. So if you are excluded from competing for the vast bulk of SFI grants then Marie Curie is your best hope.
We have been successful in two Marie Curie applications; one for Host Fellowships in 2002 and one under the Transfer of Knowledge programme in 2005. Both of these have enabled us to recruit postdoctoral and more senior researchers which has, and will increasingly, help us to achieve our goal of a 'World Class Combustion Chemistry Centre'.
Success in Marie Curie schemes is beneficial far beyond the purely financial; it validates your research group as one of the leaders in Europe and essentially puts you on the world map.
The impact has been such that we are proceeding to the next stage and preparing to co-ordinate a multi-million Research Training Network application with the help of IUA's Siobhan Harkin.
IUA's Conor O'Carroll was enormously helpful in helping us secure our first award by encouraging us to re-apply after being turned down the first time around. He cast a professional eye over our application and pointed out certain (non-scientific) flaws which we could then rectify. He also recommended that we change our application and actually request more person-months than we had originally asked for .his reasoning? "it shows ambition" It worked!"
