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Science Development Foundation under the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan

SDF (Science Development Foundation under the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan), is a government non-profit organization, established in October 2009 within the National Strategy of Development of Science in Azerbaijan, has announced and held 24 domestic and 3 international grant competitions.

Organisation

  • SDF-AZE
  • Posted on: Jan 10, 2017
  • Azerbaijan

Website: Link

Post Date: Jan 10, 2017

SDF supports scientists and specialists from academic, education, research organizations (under ministries), NGO structures, as well as employed and unemployed physical persons (scientists and specialists) through research grants.

Types of grant competitions are: so called “Annual main grant competition” (covering all of branches and directions of science and different types of research projects (fundamental, applied, so on) and programmes); Young scientists and specialists’ grant competition (up to 35 years old); “Shusha grant” competition (covering Karabakh studies); “Mobility grant” competition, at least 3 times a year (full support of participation at scientific conferences and short-term trainings abroad); “University grant” competition; targeted grant competitions such as ICT, Industry grant competitions, so on.

Types of projects supported by SDF are: Fundamental; Applied; Search – innovative; Complex targeted research projects; Mega projects (more than 500 000 Euros up to several millions Euros) – so called “pilot projects” aimed in equipping of scientific organizations with super-modern scientific devices, equipment etc. and creating new labs, as well as preparation and training staff abroad to work with these technologies; Material-technical support (scientific devices, equipment etc.) of labs, researchers; Support of publishing of monographs, books, atlases etc.; Support of organization of scientific conferences in Azerbaijan; support of participation at scientific conferences abroad; support of participation at short-term trainings abroad.

International collaboration: Black Sea HORIZON, BS-ERA-NET; UNECE; UNESCO; BSEC; CNRS (France); Belarusian Republican Foundation of Basic Studies; Kyiv National Technical University, Ukraine; Elsevier Publishing House; Springer Publishing House; TUBITAK, Turkey; so on.

Advantages are: scientific priorities are changed for each year taking into account trends in world science and collaboration; All branches and directions of science are covered; Preparation of young professionals through trainings abroad; No limitation to scientific degree and title – only scientific content is major merit; Non dependence on sex, nationality and age; Grant budget directly goes to project leader’s bank account; they get additional salaries, they have ability to travel (business trips), to get ICT facilities, special scientific equipment, so on; SDF buys (dealing with custom, tax and other authorities itself saving time for scientists) and supplies all of scientific devices, equipment, materials directly to scientists; SDF prefers so called “temporary scientific collectives” at grant project application which brings scientists from different organizations (academic, university, NGO, etc) together and stimulate their collaboration; Special weekly tutorial seminars, including those of outside Baku (capital city), how to prepare applications. SDF each year organizes different international and domestic conferences, seminars, trainings.

Expertise:


As a governmental non-profit organisation SDF-AZE brings in the project links with relevant regional policy dialogue fora and national authorities in the target geographic region, most importantly in Azerbaijan.

SDF-AZE contributes to the project through the following core competences:

1) Management and financing of science projects, science policy, R&D developments, innovations, grant competitions and project evaluation.

In detail, SDF-AZE, based on its capacity,  is going to contribute in the following tasks:

1) In WP1, in shaping the future of the EU – EaP STI cooperation

2) In WP2, in the organization of H2020 Info Days and of a local NCPs training, incooperation with Scientific Diaspora and in enhancing contacts: providing grants for networking

3) In WP3, in boosting Clusters in EaP and in promoting the ETPs concept in EaP

4) In WP5, in the content management and communities of practice

Type: government/ministry, Research Institute

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