The Daniel Carasso Fellowship closes its call with great interest from the scientific community

Our call, launched last December, has concluded with a large participation of young researchers and postdoctoral researchers covering a wide variety of approaches on the path to Sustainable Food. A professional and independent jury will choose the first person awarded the Daniel Carasso Fellowship next June.

From the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation we launched the Daniel Carasso Fellowship last December. With it, our commitment to supporting research in Sustainable Food and scientific demand has crystallised once again, addressing the need for its relocation to Spain. To achieve this, our Fellowship is endowed with 160,000 euros, of which 120,000 are intended to cover the hiring of the beneficiary for a period of 24 months and 40,000 will support research activities.

Wide diversity of countries, research centres and approaches

One of the news that has brought us the most enthusiasm from this first edition of the Fellowship has been the origin of the different applications, from a great diversity of countries. All of them were presented by consolidated research staff from universities in a large part of Spain.

What excites us most is the great diversity of the applications received. The projects presented contemplate different approaches such as nutrition, public health, food sciences, biological sciences, engineering and social sciences, among others, which offers us and society as a whole a very complete miscellany on the different ways of approaching the transition to Sustainable Food.

A two-phase

selection processAfter the deadline for receiving projects, the Daniel Carasso Fellowship Secretariat will analyze the proposals and determine if they meet the eligibility criteria. Eligible applications will be evaluated by a committee made up of researchers from different scientific disciplines, who will pre-select six candidates.

A jury will select, at the end of June, one or two beneficiaries from among the shortlisted candidates. The award ceremony will take place on October 16 in Barcelona, World Capital of Sustainable Food in 2021.

Supporting the sustainable food research sector

We decided to award the Daniel Carasso Fellowship in a context marked by the progressive decrease in the execution of public budgets in Spain dedicated to the R+D+I (Research, Development and Innovation) sector. This reduction generates in our country an exodus of young researchers abroad and a weakening of the research fabric in Spanish universities and centres, as well as a greater difficulty in attracting talent from abroad.

It is in this context that our newly created Fellowship seeks to position itself as a benchmark for supporting the research community in Spain without losing its international character. The initiative will allow us to promote the scientific career of a researcher of extraordinary quality at a critical time for his or her consolidation as a scientist, but also to promote research in Sustainable Food in Spain and the application of systemic and multidisciplinary approaches. The ultimate goal of our initiative is to promote synergies between different areas and disciplines that are usually disconnected, such as nutrition and agriculture.

At the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation, we seek in this way to support applied research and the generation of knowledge so that they converge in decision-making aimed at the transition to a more sustainable food system. Generating networks, synergies and opportunities for collaboration between research groups in Spain and France is a fundamental and essential task to achieve our objectives. With the birth of the Daniel Carasso Fellowship we want to contribute to addressing these challenges that are key to our work as a foundation.

Image credits: Markus Spike/CDC on Unsplash.