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Third call – Closed

SmartCow Transnational Access: Third Call for proposals launched

Free access to the leading European cattle research facilities

We are pleased to announce the launch of the third call for proposals for Transnational Access (TNA) within the SmartCow project. The TNA call makes available cattle research facilities of SmartCow partners for research by academic or industry colleagues from other (mainly EU) countries. The facilities include the most advanced animal science technologies applied to cattle in the fields of nutrition, physiology, ethology and animal husbandry.

Successful bidders will receive funding to cover the operating costs of facilities and travel expenses to visit the facilities, but not their own costs.

This section provides details about the TNA call:

This is the Final Call for proposals within the current project and so there are some restrictions on availability. The available cow-weeks at each facility are listed below. We aim to be as flexible as possible to allow as many high-quality projects as possible to proceed, whilst using the available cow-weeks as effectively as possible.

In particular, please note that:

  1. Whilst the cow-weeks at FBN are split between four facilities, FBN are open to reorganise allocations between the facilities to fit in with proposals (NOTE 1).
  2. There is a lot of availability of cow-weeks at Teagasc Moorepark and we particularly encourage proposals that are suited to studies with grazing dairy cows at this site.
  3. There are only a few cow-weeks left at the dairy facilities of INRAE (Le Pin or Herbipôle Marcenat-Laqueuille) and IRTA (EVAM). These may be enough for small studies – but equally we are open to consider projects that use some or all of those cow-weeks at just one of the facilities – or a multi-site study using ‘cow weeks’ at both facilities (NOTE 2)
  4. Projects proposed in facilities with remaining cow-weeks will be strongly prioritized. We will explore other options if we find that there are not enough approved projects to use all remaining cow-weeks, and this could include considering projects at other facilities.

The SmartCow project runs until January 2022 and so need to allocate funding to project as quickly as possible so that projects can be completed and reported in good time. Accordingly, we will adopt a single-stage application process with applications submitted at the following site:

https://app.oxfordabstracts.com/stages/1843/submitter

Although we will use a single-stage process, we invite applicants to check with the SmartCow Access Management Team if there are any questions about eligibility and with the individual Facility Managers if there are questions about the feasibility of projects (e.g. size of study and recording/sampling capabilities).

The SmartCow Access Management Team is available to provide advice on any aspect of the scheme; please contact them by email (smartcow-tna@inrae.fr forwards to them all) or individually: Copyright SRUC

Timetable

Applications submitted to the above portal: Wednesday 25th June 2020

Decisions will be notified by: Wednesday 9th September 2020

Projects must commence no later than: 1st April 2021

Projects must be completed by: 31st October 2021