Results from Call of IC&DT Projects in all scientific domains

FCT today communicated the results of the Call of IC&DT Projects in all scientific domains to all applicants. 551 projects were selected for funding, representing an investment of 74.9 million euros supported through the FCT national funds budget. The list of projects recommended for funding and the summary of the results of Call are available here.

This Call, with a budget of 75 million euros, supports two types of projects:

• Projects of scientific research and technological development (IC&DT), with a duration of 36 months and maximum funding per project of 250 thousand euros, with a budget of 60 million euros;
• Exploratory research projects (PeX), with a duration of 18 months and maximum funding per project of 50 thousand euros, with a budget of 15 million euros.

The 246 RTD&D projects recommended for funding are distributed over the following scientific areas: Medical and Health Sciences - 17.9%, Engineering and Technology Sciences - 24.8%, Natural Sciences - 18.3%, Social Sciences - 11.8%, Exact Sciences - 11.8%, Agricultural Sciences - 8.9%, and Humanities - 6.5%.

The 305 PeX projects recommended for funding are distributed over the following scientific areas: Medical and Health Sciences - 25.9%, Engineering and Technology Sciences - 14.1%, Natural Sciences - 18.7%, Social Sciences - 13.1%, Exact Sciences - 13.8%, Agricultural Sciences - 6.2%, and Humanities - 8.2%.

The principal investigators leading the funded projects are mostly women, representing 55.2% of the total, and 12.2% are foreign researchers, from 22 nationalities, working in research centers in Portugal and leading 67 of the selected projects.

Applications ran from January 28 to March 10 of this year. A total of 4882 applications were submitted of which 4870 applications were admitted for evaluation, in accordance with the terms of Notice of the Call de Call. After evaluation, only 3371 applications (69.2% of the evaluated applications) had the minimum score that allowed them to be eligible for funding. The success rate of Call as a % of total applications eligible for funding was 8.7% for IC&DT projects and 56.7% for exploratory projects.

The applications were evaluated by 33 evaluation panels, in different scientific areas, and 577 foreign external evaluators from 34 nationalities participated in the evaluation, of which 50.6% were women. Each proposal was evaluated and classified by the scientific merit and innovative character of the project, scientific merit of the research team, feasibility of the work program and contribution to the accumulation of knowledge and skills. In each panel, proposals were ordered by their ranking and the selection was made so that the success rate was similar across all evaluation panels in terms of volume of eligible funding requested.

The evaluation process took 4.7 months between the deadline for submission of applications and the communication of provisional results. These 551 new projects add to the 2274 IC&DT projects that are currently being executed and funded by FCT.

The Call of IC&DT projects in all scientific areas has an annual periodicity and integrates the great FCT structuring Calls , whose schedule is established until 2022 and published on the site.