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IGFAE
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Instituto Galego de Física de Altas Enerxías

IGNITE 2025

This internal call aims to stimulate innovative ideas and interdisciplinary collaboration between the IGFAE's different research programmes, with a clear focus on technology transfer and gender balance. It is one of the key instruments in the new Strategic Research Plan funded by María de Maeztu Unit of Excellence and CIGUS network: IGNITE grants have been instrumental in fostering the scientific agenda of the center since the first call in 2019.

IGNITE will fund projects proposed by members of IGFAE that could also include external collaborators. The maximum amount of funding allocated to this call is 240.000 Euros which will be distributed among different projects after evaluation. This quantity could be increased in case extra funds become available. Each project has a maximum contribution of 100.000 Euros that has to be properly justified by the end of the current María de Maeztu grant period (March 31st, 2028). Projects that receive a good evaluation but that cannot be funded in the present call will be considered for funding if additional resources become available for the Institute.

Projects will be presented by an individual or team of IGFAE researchers before the deadline May 15th 2025. One IGFAE researcher will, in any case, act as Principal Investigator (PI). Any member of IGFAE holding a PhD degree can act as PI.

The teams may be participated by non-IGFAE members, in particular from, but not restricted to, other Singular Centers from the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, the CIGUS network,  and CESGA (Galician Supercomputing Center). The participation of the non-IGFAE members should be justified by providing the expertise needed for the project which is not present at IGFAE. In this case, although co-funding of the project is not required, it will be positively considered.

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Application procedure
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The proposals consisting of a maximum of 4 pages plus a table budget should contain

  1. brief description of the idea
  2. justification of its novelty and/or the multidisciplinary nature within IGFAE
  3. description of the team
  4. methodology and timeline
  5. potential for external funding after the seed grant

The budget must contain a description of the expenses by categories (personnel, instrumentation, travel, visitors, etc.). Only expenses eligible by the María de Maeztu project can be funded in this call.

Proposals should be sent to calls@igfae.usc.es.

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Evaluation and timeline
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A committee will be formed to evaluate the proposals that can also ask the opinion of external referees. Members of the IGFAE Scientific Advisory Board could be contacted to provide advice at any step of the evaluation process.

The evaluation will be based on the novelty of the proposals within the IGFAE scientific agenda and their quality and potential to receive external funds and open future new lines in the Institute. In case several proposals are considered to be equally suitable for funding, priority will be given to those presented by female researchers and/or non-tenured staff (Ramon y Cajal, Global Talent group leaders, etc.).

The evaluation and communication of the results will be done within 30 days after the deadline of the call. After the results are communicated, Principal Investigators will have 5 days to accept the grant. The acceptance of the grant will mark its starting date.

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Previous editions
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1st call – IGNITE (2019):

Gas TPCs with fast timing capability (T0) for the DUNE Near Detector (Diego González Díaz)
PHARMI: Phoswich scintillator assembly for medical imaging (Pablo Cabanelas Eiras)
Codex-b, an experiment to unveil BSM physics searching for Long Lived Particles (Xabier Cid Vidal)

2nd call – IGNITE* (2021):

Coaxial Prompt Gamma-ray Monitoring for proton therapy (Antonio Fernández Prieto, Edgar Lemos Cid)
Gravitational Wave Patterns for Compact Star (Ricardo Vázquez, Juan Calderón Bustillo, Christoph Adam)