PRR Project

Summary

One of the key strategic areas the University of Coimbra would like to address with this FCT Tenure Call is that of Research Management, more specifically Research-On-Research, which we feel is a wave of the future, notably because we firmly believe in its potential impact in transforming the institution. This is in line with the CoARA declaration of which we have adhered to since Day One, European institutions such as the European Association of Research Managers and Administrators ( EARMA ; with whom we are collaborating), or issues such as the More than Our Rank or declarations on Open Science, which we have also signed. Furthermore, this commitment is also evidenced by the ERA Chair on Metascience and Responsible Reproducible Research EXCELsior (currently underway). These types of positions are typically not permanent, and, secondarily to this Call, we also aim to act towards the professionalization of this field in terms of Research, if they are to reach their full potential. The person selected will perform Research focusing on Research Management, both pre and post award, identifying trends, interconnection of approaches, roadblocks and biases, problems in terms of reproducibility, data management, ethics, research integrity, open access, or the growth in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) for different purposes, among other issues. Research on these topics will lead to potential innovative solutions and strategies to existing issues in terms of what Research Centers and other Researchers can do, or how the Rectory should intervene to increase connections and collaborations, impact, societal involvement, and the better mentoring of both students and researchers, with a special emphasis on researchers at an early career stage, in order to introduce a novel and more responsible research culture.Hopefully this will lead to better evidence-based research on what makes more efficient applications, better training and career development tools, as well as the testing of innovative career evaluations procedures, as we move towards a new paradigm of addressing different impact-driven outputs and societal engagement in a more holistic manner. We believe that this requires specific, dedicated, research, in line with a specific permanent position. The researcher will therefore be expected to participate in teams that submit funding proposals in this emerging field (as is the case in any other), attend specialized scientific meetings, publish results and outcomes of their research on research activities, organize certified advanced training courses (possibly also degrees at the Master and PhD level, if critical mass is achieved at the University), and, in so doing, serve internally as an ambassador of key policy changes towards the science community and contribute towards the awareness our local ecosystem, notably towards incoming researchers, much as any Researcher in any another field would do.A key aspect in this field is that, although interconnections are desirable, there are specificities of different disciplinary areas of research, at different levels, from research strategies, to models, to outputs, datasets, infrastructure and publication venues. Thus, we are planning (and submitting) five such permanent positions in this call, divided so as to optimally cover the different areas and Research Centers of the University, as well as to promote dialogue between them. The Researcher selected for each would thus also have a role in linking different Centers with the same interests in their specific domain, creating synergies, potentiating resources, reducing internal competition, and tailoring approaches, therefore leading to a maximization of efforts, a key issue in all Institutions. This specific position will focus on Health Sciences, and transversal topics such as innovative therapies or aging (two Teaming Projects are underway on these topics), neuroscience-based disorders and cognition (two ERA Chairs on these issues are underway), novel diagnostic tools and disease models, affordable healthcare, preventive medicine and behavioral changes, nutrition, One Health or antibiotic resistance. The researcher will take advantage of the full gamut of UC strengths, from drug design to clinical trials and population studies, and including different in silico, cell and animal models of disease. The Researcher would thus have to interact with R&D Units with complementary activity in this area (see next section), and would have the full support of the Rectory to do so in an open dialogue that neither jeopardizes the strategy of each R&D Unit, or impacts the academic freedom of the Researcher, but transcends what is currently known in terms of Research on Research in Health Sciences. We believe that the Rectory needs to be summoned on this specific topic, so as both to ensure a transversal research plan, and to not burden individual research centers.