1. COST POSSIBLE SUPPORT MEASURES Assoc. Prof. Albena Vutsova PhD National coordinator

2. Possible supporting measures  1. Preparatory grants  2. Co-funding grants

3. 1.Preparatory grants  Main aim-to stimulate ability of COST project preparation  Similar to the preparatory instruments for other programs  Will be in function for the second step of the project submission  The one requirement – approved first step of the proposal

4. Who can apply ? Research teams from :  Universities  Research organizations  NGO,s  SMEs  Duration of the preparatory grants- 5 months

5. Funding conditions  Eligible expenditures :  Business trips- max 2 trips;  Study visits of foreigner researchers- accommodations and daily allowance ;  Office consumables  Others  Some payments to affiliated organization

6. Evaluation criteria:1 Formal criteria :  eligibility of the proposal  relevance to the approved short proposal  relevance to the requirements for the complete project proposal

7. Evaluation criteria 2  scientific criteria - same as criteria applicable for the program  Impact - where and how, areas of intervention  project structure and management of the  added value to the COST targets

8. National authorization  Two steps :  checking project eligibility for submission to COST call  international evaluation and grant allocation (if any)  Important point - official submission in COST call !

9. 2. Co-funding COST actions – other possible measure  initiative was in action 2009 and 2010, terminated after that  could be organized on the basis of a special procedure, adopted by MES  aim - to support running actions with well-introduced BG teams

10. Realization and applicability:  only for running actions  only for research teams with own research tasks, part of the COST action WPs  only for actions in the beginning of the execution

11. Required documents  MoU for the given COST action  working program, role and concrete tasks of the BG team  preliminary budget for the performance of national tasks  share of BG affiliated organization  duration of the working program  BG research team – curricula vitae

12. Possible national procedures  validation by supporting organization – (MES)  assessment by appointed national body  contracting and reporting before the supporting organization

13. 3. Other opportunities:  project submission to the competitions of NSF:  competitions are:  thematically oriented  horizontally oriented  calls with bottom-up approach

14. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION!