Inclusiveness Target Countries Conference Grants

Any Action participant with an Affiliation in an ITC/NNC (see here for more details) can apply for the ITC Conference Grant.

All applicants/grantees must be acquainted with rules and procedures described in the Annotated Rules in Section A2, and more specifically in subsection A2-2.3.

All the written outputs/deliverables derived from the ITC Conference Grant must properly acknowledge COST Action CA21136 CosmoVerse funding, as detailed in the COST acknowledgement guidelines. More specifically, the sentence “This article/publication is based upon work from COST Action CA21136 Addressing observational tensions in cosmology with systematics and fundamental physics (CosmoVerse) supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology).” in the Acknowledgement section is expected in any follow-up publications.

The Conference must happen within the same Grant Period as that of the application (Grant Periods start on 1 November for one year).

Acceptance of oral presentation is compulsory for the application.

After the conference, the Grantee must submit in e-COST the following documents within at the latest 30 days after the conference, or 15 days after the end of the Grant Period, whichever date comes first:

• Report on the outcome of the presentation of the accepted contribution:
• For ITC Conferences Grants: in terms of grantee’s visibility, including the establishment of new contacts for future collaborations.
• The certificate of attendance.
• The programme of the conference or book of abstracts/proceedings indicating the oral presentation of the grantee.
• The copy of the given presentation.

The maximum grant that can be awarded is €2000 for live conferences and €500 for virtual conferences.

ITC Conference Grantees must make their own arrangements for all provisions related to personal security, health, taxation, social security, and pension matters.

The amount of the grant must be estimated by the applicants after the following criteria:

• The budget can cover at maximum 1 day before and 1 day after the end of the conference.
• The daily rate for accommodation, food, and local transport must be calculated based on the official COST table (link also available at p.85 of the Annotated Rules).
• Long-distance travel expenses must follow general COST rules.

Grants are processed only after the Conference ends, and after the reporting documents have been uploaded in the system and approved.

Calls for conference grants will be open continuously all year.

It is the duty of the applicant to apply and be accepted to present their work at the conference. A Grant Awarding user guide is available.

• Applicants must register for an e-COST profile to be active.
• Applicants must complete the online application form.
• The following compulsory documents must be included in the online application:
  • Title of the presentation; conference dates and country; budget requested by the applicant; attendance type (face to face or virtual).
  • Application form (template available on e-COST) describing (max 2 pages): Relevance of the conference topic to the Action and Motivation describing the potential for impact on the applicant’s career.
  • CV (No more than 3 pages – including a list of selected academic publications – if applicable).
  • Copy of the abstract of the accepted oral presentation.
  • Letter of support from home institution (in case of postgraduate students).
  • Acceptance letter from the conference organisers.

Applications will be collected and made public each month.

Ranking will operate on a “first come first served” basis, but the Grant Awarding Committee will still select the Grantees according to the connection and relevance to the goals and topics of CosmoVerse, as well as the quality of the abstract of the presentation. These decisions will be taken and made public at the end of each month until the budget allocated to Conference Grants allows.

COST Excellence and Inclusiveness Policy will also be taken into consideration.