iCARE-2 is an international fellowship program co-funded by the AIRC Foundation for cancer research (AIRC) and the European Union, under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action H2020-MSCA-COFUND-2017, grant agreement No 800924.
iCARE-2 is intended to promote the mobility to and from Italy of experienced scientists working in the field of cancer research.
With iCARE-2 funding scheme AIRC reinforces its commitment to reach the European Commission’s objective of creating an open and attractive labour market for researchers worldwide, favouring the mobility and recruitment of high quality scientists.
iCARE-2 offers different types of 3-year fellowships:
Awardees are offered optimal working conditions with employment contracts that include all social security coverage and benefits.
The 3-year fellowships awards are supplemented with a travel allowance, to cover expenses for relocating.
Hosting Institutions receive a Research/Dissemination cost contribution, to be used for scholarly open access fees and other research expenses, and a training cost contribution, to cover costs associated with the participation of the fellows to international meetings or to training events.
Within iCARE-2 program two calls have been launched in 2018 and 2019. No further calls for proposals will be published.
Founded in 1965, AIRC is a leading charity in Italy, providing at least 40% of all research funds invested in cancer research in Italy.
Our mission is:
Funds are raised through national or local outreach campaigns, and are received in the form of membership fees and/or donations from individuals as well as from public and private organizations. Grants and fellowships are awarded after a merit-based selection process.
For more information please visit the AIRC website
Horizon 2020 is the EU research and innovation program investing almost €80 billion over 7 years (2014-2020). It aims to lead to more breakthroughs, discoveries and world-firsts by taking great ideas from the lab to the market.
Activities under this Pillar aim to reinforce and extend the excellence of the Union’s science base and to consolidate the European Research Area in order to make the Union’s research and innovation system more competitive on a global scale.
MSCA provide excellent and innovative research training as well as attractive career and knowledge-exchange opportunities through cross-border and cross-sector mobility of researchers to best prepare them to face current and future societal challenges.
The MSCA offer additional funding to regional, national and international programs for research training and career development. COFUND programs encourage the movement of researchers across borders and provide good working conditions. The scheme can support doctoral and fellowship programs.
AIRC received two awards within the FP7 COFUND program: FELCARES (GA N. 245506), concluded in 2014, and iCARE (GA N. 609284), concluded in 2018.
The key features of these two programs were similar to iCARE-2:
From FELCARES to iCARE-2 a number of new features have been introduced, in order to improve the researchers' employment and working conditions, provide them with more comprehensive training and networking opportunities, and enhance their competitiveness in the job market.
30 fellowships were awarded within this program: 19 Outgoing, 6 Incoming, 5 Reintegration. For this program the success rate, calculated as n. awarded fellowships/n. submitted proposals, was 35%.
30 fellowships were awarded within this program: 16 Outgoing, 4 Incoming, 10 Reintegration. A complete list of awardees is available here. This program ended in September 2018. Due to the increased number of applications compared to FELCARES, the success rate of this program was 24%.