The Centre for Unusual Collaborations organises its second symposium at 9 February 13:00-15:00 hrs. All Young Academy members of TU/e, WUR, UU and UMC Utrecht ánd their invited colleagues are welcome to join. The symposium is meant for colleagues that are interested in unusual collaborations, want to pitch their project ideas or join discussions in breakout rooms to facilitate collaboration. Please register here
Centre for Unusual Collaborations
The Centre for Unusual Collaborations (CUCo) is part of the alliance between TU/e, WUR, UU and UMC Utrecht and aims to find solutions for societal challenges at the intersections of the humanities and social sciences, life sciences, exact and technical sciences, and agricultural and food science. The centre funds start up collaborations by means of Spark Grants, which, if successful, become eligible to submit an Unusual Collaborations Grant. To be eligible for a Spark Grant, a project idea should first be pitched at one of the CUCo symposia.
Spark Grants
Spark Grants (up to €9000) aim to stimulate unusual collaborations. The grants do this by offering initial financial support to start building committed project teams so as to explore and develop new ideas. The grants are thus a low-threshold stimulus to start collaboration, to share knowledge and best practices, and to develop something together. Spark Grants can be used to explore the feasibility of an idea or possible project and/or to test whether it can be taken further and developed into an application for an Unusual Collaborations Grant. For example financing meetings and events, assistants or other support, facilitators or coaches, field trips, etc. Funding should be spent within 1 year after it has been granted.
Pitches for Spark Grants
To be eligible for a Spark Grant, the project idea should first be pitched at one of the CUCo symposia (organised several times per year). For pitching, an interdisciplinary team should already be formed around a topic fitting the alliance and have members of the different institutes, but to still be open to include others.The topic and combinations of researchers should be unusual from the start. Please note that separate matchmaking events are organised to find collaborators.
Important to know:
- There is a limited number of pitches per symposium. Pitches will be selected based on a first-come, first-served basis, and will also be curated based on the topic/team of the pitch
- One person of the team requests a pitch (the rest of the team can just register), to avoid confusion on the number of pitch requests
- Once accepted to pitch at the symposium, all pitchers are asked to prepare a short (max. 1,5 minute) video on the project idea. The threshold for these videos is as low as it gets: webcam recordings are just fine. Creativity is encouraged.
After registration you will in due time receive a link to join the symposium online.