imπACT will offer a total of 20 fellowships fostering postdocs’ impact development and entrepreneurship. Postdoctoral researchers will be invited to propose a 2-year research and innovation project of their choice within VUB’s 8 research clusters: 1) Law & Criminology, 2) Social Sciences & Business School, 3) Psychology & Education Sciences, 4) Humanities & the Arts, 5) Sciences & Bio-Engineering, 6) Engineering, 7) Life Sciences & Pharmacy, 8) Sports & Physical Therapy. The applicants have the freedom to propose their own research project as long as there is a clear potential for economic and/or social impact. The impact potential will be maximized through the dedicated training in entrepreneurship, business case development and advanced transferable skills.
imπACT is a Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND Action for an intersectoral training, career development and international mobility fellowship programme, based at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and including a secondment period in one non-academic partner.
3 specific training programme objectives
A) Vertical in-depth training-through-research by:
- Integrating them in internationally renowned research groups at VUB
- By inviting them for the postdoctoral research training offered by the central R&D office
B) Vertical in-depth impact development and entrepreneurship training.
Impact development and entrepreneurship are interpreted broadly as knowledge and technology transfer in order to create social and/or economic impact. The training will take place by means of:
- 12 seminars covering different topics of impact development and entrepreneurship.
- 5 get-together training events coaching the postdocs on impact case development, starting from their own research results. The postdoctoral researchers will be guided by an impact mentor and will, at the end of the trajectory, present their impact case to a community of relevant stakeholders
- 4 workshops dedicated to social entrepreneurship and social enterprises to cover the growing academic and non-academic interest for these kinds of activities and to complement the focus of the other training events which lies more with so-called conventional knowledge and technology transfer. 1 intersectoral secondment of up to 3 months to a non-academic organization, which will be identified within the VUB network based on a good match with the proposed research project. A number of such organizations have already expressed their commitment as partner organization through an LoC.
C) Horizontal training in transferable skills including
These topics will be addressed during the 5 programme events. In addition, the transferable skills training will be realized through the intersectoral secondment of up to 3 months to a non-academic organization.
- Project Management
- Data Management and GDPR
- grant writing skills
- venture capital
- non-academic presentation skills, and gender in research (methodology and teams).
The visualization of imπACT’s postdoctoral training programma
