The UCLM gives a very positive account of the results obtained in last year's call, 2016, for which the academic institution was among the first Spanish universities in terms of number of projects and funding obtained. The university is pending publication of new calls for the State Plan for R&D projects of Excellence and Challenges after the Spanish General State Budget has been recently modified to be able to convene them. Specifically, it occupied position number 14, with a total of 49 projects. Out of these projects, 15 corresponded to the call for Excellence, and the remaining 34 corresponded to the Challenge. The total funding obtained amounted to 6,290,185 euros.
The new calls of the State Plan for the present year are likely to be published by the end of may after the modification of the budgetary limits for the calls for projects of R&D of Excellence and of Research Challenges 2017 have been recently approved, whose maximum financing aid amounts to 244 million euros. The University of Castilla-La Mancha states a very positive balance in the 2016 calls, as they positioned the academic institution in the 14th place, with 49 projects, among the 28 spanish universities that got at least 25 projects approved.
The financing obtained by all of them amounted to 6,290,185 euros.
Out of the projects awarded which were launched on january 1, 2017, 15 of them were in the call for Excellence with an amount of 1,575,420 euros, and the remaining 34 were obtained in the Call for Challenges, which was endowed with €4,714,765 of funding. Three of the projects are led by researchers contracted under the UCLM's own R&D Plan, with access contracts into the spanish science, technology and innovation system, and two of those projects are led by senior researchers contracted in the Ramón y Cajal Programme.
It is worth mentioning the project: “Sustainable electrochemical remediation of soil quality and water contamination through organochlorines, generated by industrial activity.” It received the highest amount of all the projects approved to the UCLM, with a total of 423,500 euros, the main researchers being: Manuel Andrés Rodrigo y Pablo Cañizares.
The evolution of the regional University, in terms of success rate in this type of calls, is more than remarkable now that it situates itself above the average of other spanish public universities with a rate of 62% in excellence projects, compared to the national average of 56%, and almost doubles the success rates of 2014 and 2015 at 32%.
Equally, the balance is extremely positive regarding the aid for pre-doctoral contracts for Research Staff Training (FPI) which allocates the Ministry of Economy, the Ministry of Industry and Energy (MINECO), and places the UCLM 13th out of the 50 spanish universities that have obtained some contract of this type, with a total of 17 contracts in the recent calls of 2016. Moreover, not a single project of the UCLM was excluded by default of form in the aforementioned calls.
In this respect, Julián Garde, vice chancellor for Research and Scientific Affairs, highlights the work performed from the Research Management Unit and “the good results obtained as a result of the quality and competitivity of our teachers.” He states: “These results reflect that our teachers are competitive in calls which, in turn, are very competitive, such as those of the State Plan for R&D projects, a fact that corroborates the quality and the excellence of the research activity carried out by our teachers and researchers.”
However, on the other hand, and after having assessed these results, Garde made reference to the fact that these UCLM research groups also urgently need the regional calls of research projects not published since 2014, as “if failing to be launched soon, there will be research groups that disappear in the next few months, leading to a significant worrying contribution to the major weakening of the already fragile system of the State Plan for R&D.”
Office of Communications, UCLM. Albacete, 19 may 2017