The Marie Curie Alumni Association has offered Honorary Membership of MCAA (Marie Curie Fellowship Association) to EURAXESS Worldwide. The award has been made at the Annual Conference and General Assembly on the 2nd of February at the KU Leuven. The award is made to Euraxess Worldwide as a legal person: this means that all Euraxess Worldwide coordinators can register as honorary members on the MSCA web portal for as long as they work for EURAXESS Worldwide.
This award will facilitate the EURAXESS Worldwide coordinators to access the MCAA database. EURAXESS Worldwide coordinators often need to find recipients of EU research funding based in cities in their territories to act as speakers in meetings they organise. MSCA has a database of over 10,000 members globally and this number is growing very strongly. Over 25% of the membership is of non-EU citizenship and many of those who return to their home countries make careers in research.
Brian Cahill, Chair of the Marie Curie Fellows Association, stated: “I first heard of EURAXESS Links during my time as MCAA German Chapter Chair. Many of the International Outgoing Fellows returned from the USA with great reports of the activities of EURAXESS North America. These activities, particularly the Science Slams, gave MSCA fellows in North America almost their only chance to meet each other. In November 2015, I attended the EURAXESS Germany network meeting in Bonn, where Alice Wignjosaputro explained exactly how the network worked. As Chair of MCAA, I had the pleasure of making contact with Ainhitze Bizkarralegorra Bravo of EURAXESS India to help coordinate the activities of the MCAA Indian Chapter. Ainhitze put me in contact with all of the EURAXESS Links Coordinators throughout the world. This was a very useful way for MCAA to found chapters in all EURAXESS Worldwide territories apart from Japan. These chapters work closely with EURAXESS Worldwide and the coordinators very often hand-picked the founding chairs to ensure excellent chapter leadership. The coordinators helped our chapters to build effective networks from the very beginning. The most spectacular achievement was last year’s 3-day MCAA Brazil-Europe conference that attracted 260 attendees. MCAA is taking part in the mentoring scheme for diaspora researchers organised by EURAXESS North America. Our South-East Asia Chapter has been particularly effective at promoting European research in many countries: Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand. Our China Chapter Chair organised a joint event with EURAXESS China this summer. I had some interesting discussions with Mathieu Py about the particularities of the Japanese research world.”
