JTS Early Career Researcher Prize

To stimulate smaller and short term activities within the UG that are linked to the Jantina Tammes School of Digital Society, Technology and AI, the JTS office reserved a budget for the JTS Early Career Researcher Prize.

The budget is €13.500,- a year, which will be subdivided into 5 grants of € 2.500,- and a bonus of  €1.000,- for the winner of the Early Career Researcher Prize Pitch Event to spend on a short movie/vlog  to create awareness of the winning topic.

In addition to that, the ICT Innovation fund sponsors another valuable prize. The highly skilled data experts from the Center for Information Technology will support the finalists with in total 300 hours of technical expertise in the fields of geo-analytics, machine learning, natural language processing, statistics and VR (to name a few). This support will be distributed over the final 5 projects ranging from 50 to 100 hours per researcher. This way the CIT data experts will actively work with you to enhance your research!

Why do we organise this Prize?

• To provide a stage for young researchers working on JTS related themes.
• To stimulate UG early career academic staff and PhD’s on further developing their research projects on JTS related themes.
• To stimulate knowledge development and exchange between UG academic staff & students on JTS related themes.
• To stimulate the dissemination of the work of the UG and relevant stakeholders  on digital challenges related to societal challenges.
• To brand the UG in terms of its JTS activities in a positive way.

Ideas for the activities financed by the prize could be:

• Knowledge development and exchange: to further stimulate the JTS theme within the UG, the grant can be used to organise academic activities or sponsor parts of it.
• Workshops / seminars / webinars.
• Small conferences: essentially, the costs of conferences should be covered by the fees of participants. The grant intends to upgrade the quality of the initiative by, for instance, making a high level 'keynote speaker’ possible.
• Dissemination and branding: the societal impact of UG research and teaching activities can often be strengthened by forms of visualisation of research.
• Outreach activities.
• Communicating research findings to societal partners in a booklet.
• All other ideas are welcome.

Committee

Proposals will be judged by a small standing committee. The committee consists of one member of the Advisory Group of JTS,  a member of the JTS Management Team and someone from outside the university.

Conditions/Criteria

• The activity fits the JTS theme clearly. This means that it addresses a well described challenge.
  Digitization affects all aspects of our everyday lives. It influences how we work, how we connect to society and politics, how we communicate, and how we stay healthy. A digital society has enormous potential to solve complex societal issues, such as the energy transition, how to generate economic growth, how to improve the quality of education, and how to improve our well-being.Therefore, our goal ‘digital prosperity for all’ is not limited to one of these aspects.
• The early career researchers include the university staff who has received their PhD degree less than 10 years at the opening of the call. The 10-year period can be extended up to a maximum of 2 years in case of pregnancy, illness, special training, and other significant professional or personal event; the extension needs to be checked and approved by the school.
• The grant must be used for an interdisciplinary activity in nature and transcends disciplinary borders of faculties.
• JTS Early Career Researcher Prize are especially meant to make a difference in making an activity happen.
• The applicants are obliged to mention JTS in their communication and outreach related to their activity (by for example showing JTS’s logo).
• The applicant has to fill in a form to submit a proposal for the prize.
• Applicants who receive a prize will be asked to submit a short report which will be used by JTS for communication purposes and should indicate the impact of the JTS prize.
• The prize can only be used for an activity in the near future (within 6 months).

Procedure

• Applications must be submitted using the application form.
• Application deadline for 2024 is June 11th, 2024.
• The selection committee will select 5 applications for the Pitch Event. These 5 applications will all receive € 2500.
• The winner of the JTS Early Career Researcher Prize Pitch Event will receive a bonus of € 1000 as stated in these guidelines.
• The payment will take place via the standard UG methods and guidelines.

If you have any questions about the  JTS Small Grants, do not hesitate to contact us via: jtschool rug.nl