Public Call for Project proposals under the Program IDEAS is officially closed.

A total of 915 Project applications for IDEAS Program were received. With a total budget of €24 million, the Program IDEAS is the largest Program of the Science Fund of the Republic of Serbia.

The total budget of all received Project proposals is €241.861.988. The lowest proposed budget is €36.759, and the maximum proposed budget is €500.000. The average proposed budget is €264.330.

A total of 9096 researchers applied with 915 Project proposals.

The Project proposals were submitted from Scientific and Research Organisations (SROs) from 21 different cities in the Republic of Serbia: Belgrade (591), Novi Sad (171), Niš (51), Kragujevac (44), Kosovska Mitrovica (16), Bor (11), Čačak (6), Leskovac (6), Kruševac (3), Novi Pazar (3), Subotica (2), Kraljevo (2), Jagodina (1), Leposavić (1), Pančevo (1), Smederevska Palanka (1), Sombor (1), Sremska Kamenica (1), Užice (1), Vrnjačka Banja (1) and Zaječar (1).

The Science Fund has received 263 Project proposals from natural sciences, 276 Project proposals from technology and engineering sciences, 168 Project proposals from biomedical sciences and 208 Project proposals from social sciences and humanities.

The IDEAS Program supports basic and applied research in all scientific fields. The Program goal is financing Projects based on outstanding ideas that can have in the future, a significant impact on the development of science and research, economy and/or society as a whole.

Since March 11, when the Public Call for the IDEAS Program was announced, the Science Fund has been actively communicating with researchers in order to prepare better and submit a Project Proposals within the Program.

The situation caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic and the declared emergency state in the Republic of Serbia, the Science Fund had twice extended the deadline for the submission of Project proposals within IDEAS program. The deadline moved to August 7 from June 6, and then to October 7 from June 6. Thus, the opportunity was given to all interested researchers to overcome the difficulties caused by the pandemic and to prepare a Project proposal under the IDEAS Program.

During this period, the Science Fund provided support during the preparation of Projects through digital channels and organized 13 online open-door sessions through video conferencing software platform attended by 688 researchers. The Science Fund responded to more than 3000 email enquiries and published 935 responses to asked questions on its website. Questions and answers from open-door sessions were published on the official website so that all researchers have had access to all the information.

The Science Fund will directly contact all the Principal Investigators via email and inform them about the receipt of the Project proposals.

Project proposals will undergo the administrative examination. Project proposals that pass the administrative examination shall qualify for the evaluation procedure. In both stages of the evaluation, international experts evaluate the Projects according to criteria and procedures of the Program.

The Science Fund will inform researchers about further steps via email, as well as through the official website and social networks.

The Projects are expected to start in September 2021. The approved Projects are designed for duration of up to three years.