Published on January 14, 2021 | Updated on April 12, 2021

Collaborative Research Call 2021

This call will support research initiatives within the scope of the CORTEX project for teams wishing to initiate collaborative projects with other groups of the Lyon area. The goal of this call is to support high risk-high gain projects during the early phase of their development, in order to generate enough results to be subsequently supported by more traditional funding sources (ANR, Europe…). 

This call will be opened in 2021 and 2022 and funds will be available until October 2024.

Eligibility criteria:

1-    At least 2 teams of 2 different institutes of the Lyon area have to propose a collaborative project 

2-    The project leader must be a PI of a CORTEX team 

3-    Teams outside of the Lyon area can be associated to the project but will not be funded 

4-    A team cannot be part of more than one project 

5-    Funding can be used to support any type of expenses: personnel, operating and management costs... 

6-    The research project must be in line with CORTEX’s scientific policy


Amount of the grant and payment terms:

A global envelope of 750 000 € will be dedicated for this 2021 call. Research projects with 2 local partners will be granted up to a maximum of 150 000 €, research projects with more local partners may be granted up to a maximum of 250 000 €. An individual team cannot receive more than 75 000 € through this call, including the amount potentially received in 2020. Funds have to be spent before October 2024.

Funding will be managed by the LabEx project manager. Invoices will be processed directly by CORTEX (through the usual channels). Payment of salaries may be organised by the coordination team if the staff is employed by University of Lyon. Otherwise repayment conventions will be made with the partner involved.


Timetable, application and selection procedures

The call for proposals opens on 15/01/2021

The project leaders (PI CORTEX teams) will fill in the application file in English and then, send the file, signed by all the partners, to the project manager by April 25th, midnight.

The results will be published on June 30th

The selection criteria are:

1-    Synergy between research teams, interdisciplinary nature of the project 

2-    Originality and novelty 

3-    Relevance of the scientific project and international positioning 

4-    Feasibility (implementation of resources, deployment of the project over time) of the project.

The submitted projects will be evaluated by the LabEx CORTEX Steering Committee with the help of external experts.

Please note that if applicant teams have submitted a similar proposal to other funding agencies in parallel to this call, the CORTEX steering committee could decide to reallocate the CORTEX funds to other proposals if the project gets funded independently from CORTEX.