Small Grant Scheme 2024 awarded to Margarita Ryzhova
We are happy to announce that this year’s Small Grant Scheme has been awarded to Margarita Ryzhova. Reviewers and submission board were convinced by the proposed research visit to the University of Lille to continue collaborative research on the effects of simplification strategies in French medical texts, examining differences between domain expert and non-expert readers. Congratulations and all the best for the research project!
Next call for proposals:
Small Grant Scheme for Doctoral Researchers of the MGK – CRC 1102
Deadline for applications: September 15, 2025
In 2023 we implemented a new measure that aims to promote the Doctoral researchers’ skills in writing grant proposals and to stimulate their scientific independence and creativity. With this Small Grant Scheme we want to give the Doctoral researchers the opportunity to apply for a small budget for the support of (1) small research projects or (2) research visits to other institutions.
The aim of the Small Grant Scheme is to foster the development of the skills necessary to independently plan a research activity and to convince a scientific audience of its merit. Therefore, the scheme does not support activities that are integral parts of the doctoral researchers’ genuine PhD projects, but will support additional research activities by one or more doctoral researchers that are planned relatively independently from their PhD supervisor(s) (i.e., the supervisor(s) is/are invited to provide feedback, but the idea and responsibility for the activity should be with the PhD applicant(s)).
The Small Grant Scheme offers financial support of up to € 4.000 per individual activity of single-applicant proposals and up to € 6.000 for a joint project by multi-applicant proposals (from different working units). Requested costs may be associated with conducting the proposed research and/or with required travels and accommodation.
The next and last call will end on September 15, 2025. Up to two applications will be selected for the call. The proposed activity has to be conducted within 12 months after receiving the support notice. A project report including justification of funds spent has to be submitted at the end of this period.
The main selection criteria are (1) the scientific merit of the proposed project or research visit and (2) the compelling communication of the significance of the activity. In case of more excellent applications than available funds, we give priority to projects that are submitted jointly by more than one MGK member as an internal cooperation.
Applicants should submit brief proposals of up to 4 pages until September 15, 2025 by e-mail to sfb1102@uni-saarland.de, subject: Small Grant Scheme, using the proposal template provided. Applications for small research projects should include (a) a description of the research question, (b) a commentary on why it is important to address it, (c) a description of the proposed research, (d) a time schedule, and (e) a justification of the requested funding. Applications for research visits should describe (a) what you will be working on during your visit, (b) the significance of the research visit for your scientific career, and (c) how the visit relates to your genuine research interests.
The application should be accompanied by a scientific CV and a brief letter of confirmation of the primary supervisor indicating that the supervisor approves the application. We are looking forward to your application!
Axel Mecklinger, Ingo Reich & Heike Przybyl
Small Grant Scheme 2023 awarded to Marian Marchal and Iuliia Zaitova
Congratulations to Marian Marchal and Iuliia Zaitova for winning the Small Grant Scheme 2023! The two PhD students convinced reviewers and submission board of their proposed research projects. Marian Marchal receives support for a research visit at the University of Edinburgh with the project „Disentangling relation and content prediction using eyetracking-while-reading“. Iuliia Zaitova’s project, submitted in cooperation with Wei Xue, investigates „Validating the effects of additional visual information on spoken perception of mutual intelligibility“.