With the aim of facilitating the preparation of competitive projects, STARS EU offers you a practical guide that explains the evaluation criteria, the maximum budget, and the participation requirements for the second round of the seed grant call, open to the nine partners of the alliance from May this year until March 2026.

Everything you need to know to make your project a winning proposal is included here: the keys to submitting proposals, the deadlines to bear in mind, the minimum number of partner universities, the eligible expenses, and the submission procedure. All of this is designed to encourage solid and well-structured proposals.

With these fundamental guidelines, researchers and PhD candidates will be able to optimise their competitive proposals for European programmes such as Horizon Europe and the upcoming FP10, through specialised advisory services and financial support. To achieve this, it is essential to emphasise the clarity of the idea, the multidisciplinary approach, and the alignment with the Priority Areas of the alliance.

Financing

Each participating university may receive up to EUR 3,000 for RIA, IA and Cofund calls, and EUR 2,000 for CSA actions. The funding may be used to cover costs related to international consortium meetings, travel for external partners, external consultancy services, support for specific proposal writing, proofreading, and document design.

To address any queries, the alliance organised a series of informative activities, including a webinar and explanatory documents. The first webinar was hold on 11 June, led by Carl-Fredrik Miles, member of the STARS EU Steering Committee and project manager for STARS EU at University West. People interested in see it can do it link here: starseu.org/guidelines-for-stars-eu-seed-grant-for-research-and-innovation-project-proposals/. The second one will possibly take place in October or November 2025.

The STARS EU Funding Expert Group will evaluate the submitted proposals based on specific criteria, including clarity of the project idea, relevance, feasibility, and multi-disciplinarity, among other aspects. Once the proposals are assessed, the committee will notify applicants of its decision within a maximum of three weeks.

Funding will be disbursed only after the official submission of the proposal via the relevant Horizon Europe or FP10 portal, together with a financial report and a copy of the submitted application.

For further information and to access the full call guidelines, click here: Guidelines for STARS EU Seed Grant

Contact: starseu@hv.se

STARS EU has opened a call aimed to researchers of the nine allied universities, to provide seed funding to develop collaborative research and innovation projects. The complete guidelines can be download using this link, and also visiting the “Calls” section of the STARS EU website. This is a pilot call that starts in April 2024 and runs until March 2025, and afterwards it will be evaluated and improve for future editions.

This grant will provide financial support up to € 3,000 per partner involved in each project. So, if there are three partners, the grant will be 9,000 EUR. This funding can be used for several purposes related to the start-up of a project (hence the denomination “seed”), such as costs related to international meetings or writing sessions; or external consultancy services including writing proposals, proof reading or designing duties, among others.

STARS EU partners can submit a proposal for a seed grant related to researchers, early-stage researchers, innovators, PhD students and other profiles. The envisaged project must have a clear link with the STARS EU strategy and priority areas and must include, at least, three alliance partners. Each university will finance the expenses of its participants.

This is an open call, which means that there is not a closed date for receiving proposals, but in order to be eligible, the application must be submitted to starseu@org.hanze.nl at least three months before the deadline of submission of the envisaged Horizon Europe or FP10 call.

All projects will be evaluated by an assessment panel consisting of representatives of STARS EU Steering Committee, which will have in consideration the criteria expressed in the guidelines document to measure its relevance, clarity and feasibility.

This guidelines document also includes information regarding the main content of the application and the budget, and offers the possibility of reaching the STARS EU Funding Expert Group for support at starseu@hv.se.