The first ESA Call for Research Proposals of the Living Planet Fellowship has been opened.
The main objective of this initiative is to provide support to young researchers who have a doctoral degree and who would like to initiate a scientific career in the context of Earth Observation, Earth science and Climate research. Candidate researchers shall submit research proposals responding to one of following Programmatic Areas:
A) Support To Science:
- Scientific exploitation of ESA.s Earth Explorer missions (i.e. SMOS, CryoSat, GOCE and Swarm), developing and validating innovative methods, novel products and promoting new scientific results.
- Earth System Science research maximizing the exploitation of ESA missions and long-term ESA archives (e.g. ERS-1, ERS-2, Envisat), also in synergy with other ESA and non-ESA data sets, specifically addressing the new scientific challenges of the Living Planet Programme.
B) Scientific Exploitation of the Sentinels:
- Development and validation of advanced EO methods and products for scientific exploitation of the continued observations and innovative features of the Sentinel missions (Sentinel 1, Sentinel 2, Sentinel 3 or Sentinel 5P).
- Developing novel scientific methods and tools for enhancing the synergetic exploitation of the Sentinel missions (Sentinel 1, Sentinel 2, Sentinel 3 and Sentinel 5P).
C) Climate Change Initiative:
- Exploiting Essential Climate Variable (ECV) products generated by the ESA.s Climate Change Initiative (CCI) for improved understanding of the climate system.
- Examining Cross-ECV consistency and multiple ECV use (those under the CCI Programme in particular).
Selected project proposals, will be awarded with a maximum budget of 40KEuro per year as a co-funding contribution to a standard post-doctoral position plus 3KEuro to cover costs associated to travels, conference fees and publications. The Host Institution shall co-finance and provide a post-doctoral contract to the candidate to undertake the research activity proposed. The Host Institution shall contribute with, as a minimum, 30% of the overall cost for the two years.
The documentation and call information (Call for Research Proposals package) can be downloaded from http://livingplanetfellowship.esa.int.
Proposal and all supporting documents must be sent by e-mail to: EOScience [at] esa.int by no later than 30 June 2014 (the Closing Date).