european connection voices
What benefits will the enhanced CONICYT-BMBF partnership bring to researchers? The new international joint research programme to be launched later this month by CONICYT and the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) marks the beginning of a new phase in the scientific and technological cooperation between Chile and Germany. Inge Lamberz De Bayas from BMBF describes the opportunities that this new initiative will bring for researchers in both countries.
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he long lasting relationship of cooperation between BMBF and CONICYT is getting a new impulse with the International Joint Research Programme being introduced by both institutions this year. The backdrop to this new initiative is the Programme for International Scientific Cooperation (PCCI for its Spanish acronym) developed by both BMBF and CONICYT some twenty years ago. This programme supported researcher mobility to link projects in Chile and Germany by funding travel activities (flights and daily allowance) for scientific projects for two years with a view to assisting bilateral mobility projects develop into joint research projects supported by other programmes and organisations like the EU. The main thematic areas of scientific cooperation between Germany and Chile considered under this programme were: biotechnology (especially nutrition), renewable energies, sustainable development of natural resources, environmental research, marine and polar research, and photonics. Since the start of the Programme for International Scientific Cooperation in the early 90’s up until the latest call in 2013, a total of 124 projects have been funded. The intensification in the last three years of scientific cooperation between Germany and Chile has made it necessary to scale up cooperation offering scientists the possibility to
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The new CONICYT-BMBF joint research call will include sustainable mining as one of the thematic areas.
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