FCT has released the results of the Call for Associate Laboratory Status

FCT published today, February 24, the provisional results of the Call for Associate Laboratory (AL) Status, in which 40 institutions or consortia of institutions were approved for Associate Laboratory Status. This Call established the allocation of complementary funding for the specific activities of the ALs of €23,843,000 per year, starting in 2021 and for a period of 5 years, which is in addition to the funding of €53,469,000 per year already granted to the Research Units that are part of the ALs. The results are available here and the evaluation reports here.

The laboratories are structural components of the National Scientific and Technological System and consist of research and development (R&D) institutions or consortia of R&D institutions that make explicit institutional commitments to pursuing national scientific and technological policy objectives. To this end, these laboratories must have a dimension of human resources and scientific infrastructure that allows them to sustainably promote scientific and technical careers for doctoral graduates.

Started in 2019, the process of granting LA status was prepared and conducted by the FCT with criteria of transparency and the involvement of the scientific community, in which extensive informal discussions were held on the regulation of the process, which culminated in a public discussion and publication of the Associate Laboratories Regulation on November 12, 2019.

The application process for this Call is open permanently and with a single annual evaluation period. The applications now being evaluated were submitted between September 28 and October 29, 2020. R&D Units funded by FCT with an Excellent or Very Good rating and with a minimum of 80 integrated doctoral researchers at the time of the application could apply, individually or in consortium. 45 applications were submitted, covering a total of 118 Units and 10,088 integrated researchers. The evaluation was conducted by a national panel coordinated by Manuel Nunes da Ponte and with the collaboration of an international scientific council. All the applications were presented and discussed publicly(videos of the sessions).

The LAs approved in this evaluation exercise are distributed throughout the country, and in the case of consortia they may cover more than one region. There are 15 in the North, 7 in the Center, 15 in Lisbon, 2 in the Alentejo and 1 in the Algarve.

By major scientific area, the LAs are distributed as follows: Life and Health Sciences: 6; Exact and Engineering Sciences: 18; Natural and Environmental Sciences: 12, Social Sciences and Humanities: 4. Of the 40 coordinators of the LA, 13 are women (33%).