Important information on EU access programs

EU funding for travel reimbursement no more available for general projects 
FP7 ELISA (Transnational Access Project) will end on August 31, 2011. Unfortunately the follow-up proposal for EU funding of transnational access to multidisciplinary Synchrotron and FEL users has been rejected by the European Commission. Thus, effective September 1, 2011 the EU funding for travel & subsistence reimbursement is no longer available for general projects.

A new project funded by the European Commission and dedicated to Biological Structure determination at Synchrotron facilities will start on September 1st, 2011. One of the activities of the BioStruct-X project will be the financial support to Transnational Users of synchrotron radiation techniques as Macromolecular Crystallography, Small Angle X-ray Scattering and X-ray Imaging, with research projects regarding the determination of structures of biological macromolecules and cellular and subcellular ultra structures. The official web-site for this program is: http://www.biostruct-x.eu 

The project operates a central Block Allocation Group (BAG) proposal mechanism, which will promote project excellence, multi-site applications and the combination of different methods and hybrid approaches. Applications for Trans National Access (TNA) support need to have been made prior to requests for facility access. The lifetime for BioStruct-X support of the BAG starts at the date when the evaluation result is passed to the proposers and is valid for one year. During the lifetime of the BAG, BioStruct-X partner facilities for infrastructure (such as the MAX-IV laboratory) can be approached for access with BioStruct-X support. When applying via the facilities’ local application procedure, they must clearly identify themselves as applying as part of the BioStruct-X supported BAG. The facilities retain a right to decide on project access and additional project assessment procedures that may be required by their governance structures. Possible BioStruct-X support is limited to their offer within the BioStruct-X grant, not exceeding 20% of their facility user community, and therefore is not guaranteed by a successful BAG application.

Proposal submission can be done from 1-11-2011 onwards at the BioStruct-X webpage. Proposals will be evaluated within 4 weeks of submittal.

Guidelines for the application procedure to receive BioStruct-X funding can be found here: http://www.biostruct-x.eu/content/application-guidelines-0

For help with questions on the BioStruct-X support, contact Marjolein.Thunnissen@biochemistry.lu.se.

For other research projects a new proposal will be submitted to the European Commission in November 2011. Users will be timely informed about new funding possibilities.

Guidelines for projects that have been approved support from the ELISA access program (until 31 August, 2011) are found here.