Fonds GA - Global Activities Material

With EBNIC-2 not being accepted for funding, EMBO Council decided to establish a working party to establish a strategic focus for a World Programme, analysing how much emphasis to give to different actions, different geographic areas that should be targeted, and how to interact with other national and international activities.

The World Programme was ratified by council in 2003. It initially offered 6-9 month “Medium Term” fellowships, with a focus on training, acquiring new techniques, and building relationships which should continue after the scientists’ return to their home labs. They also offered Practical courses to allow students from different continents to interact with each other and to learn new methods together, workshops to allow scientists from different countries to meet, discuss, and plan to collaborate, and plenary lectures to build the profile of European scientists internationally.

Additionally, the World Programme reached an agreement with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) to work with EMBO to establish a screening service in order to improve the flow of high-quality scientists to Europe, and in return to provide fellowships and the organisation of courses and workshops in China.

It also created a Mobility Consultancy initiative in collaboration with HFSP, the Wellcome Trust, and The World Academy of Sciences, the purpose of which was to provide information on European funding sources and grant application procedures to interested scientists outside of Europe.

In conjunction with these organisations, EMBO also coordinated a project to research information on educational opportunities, research accomplishments, and science policy in a selection of resource-constrained countries. Together they presented a meeting entitled “Promoting Life Sciences in Developing Countries”, bringing together representatives of major international organisations supporting the sciences in resource-constrained countries, and published a report off the back of this meeting.

In 2008 council decided to establish a working party to advise on future strategies related to developing a policy strategy to inform EMBO’s relationships with Non-European countries, and a year later the program was renamed “EMBO Global Exchange Programme”. The purpose was not to teach basic research, but instead to establish high-level scientific interactions/partnerships with countries where good science and scientific infrastructure had already been established. A committee was established to oversee its activities. In 2012 the name was changed once again, this time to “Global Activities”.

In 2005 the EMBC began to formalise its relationships with countries outside of the European area, initiating a cooperation status with South Africa, which expired in 2016. Following this, the EMBC established its first full cooperation agreement with Singapore in 2011, with Singapore subsequently become EMBO’s first Associate Member State in 2015. India became an Associate Member State a year later in 2016. Taiwan entered a cooperation agreement with EMBO in 2012, Chile signed one in 2018, and the Japan Science and Technology Agency signed one in 2023.