STN – Call for Applications

Next dead­line: 02 April 2025

Background

ESEB’s STN Ini­ti­at­ive sup­ports net­work­ing activ­it­ies in vari­ous spe­cif­ic areas of evol­u­tion­ary research. Each STN is fun­ded for up to 6 years (sub­ject to review after 2 and 4 years of oper­a­tion) with up to 10,000 Euros for each 2‑year fund­ing peri­od. Twelve STNs have been sup­por­ted since the start of the ini­ti­at­ive, and up to four new STNs will be ini­ti­ated every oth­er year. Net­work­ing activ­it­ies may include the organ­isa­tion of sym­po­sia, work­shops, lec­ture series, courses, and lab vis­its or joint work on review papers or data­bases. How­ever, the format of an STN is up to the organ­isers, and innov­at­ive ideas are encour­aged. All act­ive fields of evol­u­tion­ary research are eli­gible, provided that the top­ic of the net­work dif­fers from the STNs that are cur­rently fun­ded (see the list of cur­rently fun­ded STNs below).

Proposals and selection procedure

Applic­ants should provide a pro­pos­al with the fol­low­ing components.

1. Top­ic of the net­work: a descrip­tion of the research area to be tar­geted, explain­ing why it is timely to address the pro­posed top­ic by a net­work­ing ini­ti­at­ive, and out­lining the expec­ted bene­fits of the STN to the field (max. 1000 words).
2. Net­work activ­it­ies: a glob­al descrip­tion of the planned net­work­ing activ­it­ies that includes inform­a­tion on the tar­get group of research­ers and a more spe­cif­ic descrip­tion of the activ­it­ies planned for the first two years of oper­a­tion of the STN (max. 500 words).
3. Organ­isa­tion of the STN: the names and affil­i­ations of the organ­isers of the pro­posed STN, and brief CVs (max. 1 page) of 3 to 5 core organ­isers; an explan­a­tion of the organ­isa­tion­al fea­tures of the STN (e.g., man­age­ment of funds provided by ESEB, decision-mak­ing in the net­work, web­site and pro­mo­tion­al activ­it­ies), and a descrip­tion of the feas­ib­il­ity of the plans in view of the restric­ted budget (max. 500 words, exclud­ing the CVs).

The require­ments to be sat­is­fied and the eval­u­ation cri­ter­ia will be detailed below. Applic­a­tions should be emailed as a single PDF file to the ESEB office (office@eseb.org) by 2^nd April 2025. Updated ver­sions of pre­vi­ously sub­mit­ted pro­pos­als are wel­come. Fol­low­ing the clos­ing date, ESEB’s STN Com­mit­tee will install an inde­pend­ent STN Review Pan­el con­sist­ing of ESEB mem­bers without con­flict of interest with any of the sub­mit­ted pro­pos­als. The STN Review Pan­el will eval­u­ate and rank the pro­pos­als and make fund­ing recom­mend­a­tions to the ESEB Coun­cil. The out­come will be announced after the next Coun­cil meet­ing, at the latest on 31^st August 2025.

Evaluation and funding criteria

The pro­posed top­ic of the STN will be the prin­cip­al eval­u­ation cri­terion. The score for this cri­terion will be based on part (1) of the applic­a­tion and will account for 50% of the over­all score. The effect­ive and innov­at­ive nature of the pro­posed net­work activ­it­ies laid out in part (2) of the pro­pos­al will account for 25% of the over­all score. The organ­isa­tion­al aspects (includ­ing budget and feas­ib­il­ity con­sid­er­a­tions) described in part (3) of the applic­a­tion will account for the remain­ing 25% of the over­all score.

Funding requirements

(1) Top­ic of the net­work (50%): An STN should focus on an act­ive area of research with­in the scope of evol­u­tion­ary bio­logy. New STNs should address top­ics dis­tinct from those covered by cur­rently fun­ded STNs. The applic­ants have to demon­strate that the top­ic is timely, inter­est­ing, and import­ant, that, by con­nect­ing research­ers, the pro­posed STN has the poten­tial to stim­u­late pro­gress, and that the cor­res­pond­ing field of research will profit from the STN. Applic­a­tions pro­pos­ing new con­nec­tions between sub-dis­cip­lines or intend­ing to resolve cur­rent con­tro­ver­sies are par­tic­u­larly promising.

(2) Net­work activ­it­ies (25%): Dur­ing the six-year peri­od of its exist­ence, a typ­ic­al STN organ­ises sev­er­al meet­ings (e.g., dis­cus­sion meet­ings, work­shops, or a sym­posi­um at an ESEB Con­gress). In addi­tion, an STN might organ­ise lec­ture series, courses, train­ing events, etc. The STN can also stim­u­late the col­lab­or­a­tion of its mem­bers in gen­er­at­ing resources (e.g., a joint data­base) or pub­lic­a­tions (e.g., review or opin­ion papers). The applic­ants of an STN should con­sider how, between meet­ings, the inter­ac­tion among mem­bers can be fostered, e.g., via social media, online dis­cus­sion for­ums, or sim­il­ar. The effect­ive and innov­at­ive nature of the net­work­ing plans is an import­ant eval­u­ation cri­terion. ESEB imposes the fol­low­ing require­ments on the activ­it­ies of an STN:

• STNs should organ­ise at least two meet­ings, pref­er­en­tially one in the year fol­low­ing their incep­tion and one in their final year. STNs should con­sider offer­ing a con­tri­bu­tion to an ESEB Con­gress (e.g., organ­ising a sym­posi­um on the top­ic of the STN)..
• Dur­ing its peri­od of oper­a­tions, each STN is expec­ted to make at least one con­tri­bu­tion to one of the ESEB journ­als (Journ­al of Evol­u­tion­ary Bio­logy or Evol­u­tion Let­ters). This could, for example, be an invited review or a spe­cial issue.
• ESEB sup­port should be recog­nised in all pro­mo­tion of STN activ­it­ies and pub­lic­a­tions or oth­er out­put arising from STN activities.

(3) Organ­isa­tion of the STN (25%): Regard­ing the organ­isa­tion of an STN, the fol­low­ing guidelines should be taken into account:

• The pro­pos­al should be sup­por­ted by at least three ESEB mem­bers (val­id mem­ber­ship on the clos­ing date for applic­a­tions) from at least two and typ­ic­ally three coun­tries who, poten­tially togeth­er with non-ESEB mem­bers, com­mit to organ­ising the STN for its dur­a­tion (or to find­ing appro­pri­ate replace­ments if forced to step down). A mem­ber should sup­port no more than one pro­pos­al in a giv­en applic­a­tion round, and the organ­isers of cur­rent STNs should not be pro­posers of new STNs. The diversity of the group of organ­isers is an eval­u­ation criterion.
• STNs may have a core mem­ber­ship and restrict some activ­it­ies to this core group, but gen­er­ally, the STN activ­it­ies should be as open as pos­sible to all inter­ested par­ti­cipants. STNs should strive to involve the broad­est pos­sible range of par­ti­cipants regard­ing career stage, gender and nation­al­ity. ESEB mem­bers should be giv­en pri­or­ity and, where appro­pri­ate, giv­en sub­sid­ised access to STN activ­it­ies where num­bers are lim­ited or where there is a cost to participation.
• Each STN should main­tain an act­ive pres­ence on the web, with access pos­sible from the ESEB web­site at least to ‘pub­lic’ areas. ESEB appre­ci­ates that STNs may wish to main­tain some private work­ing space, for example for the pre­par­a­tion of publications.
• STNs should strive to keep the envir­on­ment­al impact as low as pos­sible. For instance, air­fares are only eli­gible expenses if the dis­tance trav­elled is more than 500 km, or the travel time with altern­at­ive trans­port options is more than 6 hours. Fur­ther policies, e.g., for the organ­isa­tion of meet­ings, can be reques­ted from the ESEB office.
• Applic­ants should identi­fy an insti­tu­tion that is pre­pared to open an account in which the funds provided for the STN can be depos­ited and man­aged by the applic­ants. ‘Over­heads’ will not be paid to this insti­tu­tion but reas­on­able dir­ect admin­is­trat­ive costs will be eli­gible. At the end of each 2‑year peri­od, the STN will be asked to sub­mit a report of the activ­it­ies in the pre­ced­ing two years, accom­pan­ied by a cer­ti­fied state­ment of expendit­ures provided by the insti­tu­tion man­aging the funds. Fund­ing for the next 2‑year peri­od will be sub­ject to approv­al of the report and the fin­an­cial state­ment by the ESEB Coun­cil. The prin­cip­al cri­terion for renew­al will be evid­ence that the fund­ing provided had been used in line with the STN proposal.
• STNs may wish to seek addi­tion­al funds from oth­er agen­cies, or from par­ti­cipants. If this is con­sidered essen­tial for the planned activ­it­ies, then a strategy should be out­lined in the proposal.

Cur­rently fun­ded networks

• Eco­lo­gic­al gen­om­ics of coe­volu­tion­ary inter­ac­tions (star­ted in 2017)
• Evol­u­tion­ary eco­logy of thermal fer­til­ity lim­its (star­ted in 2019)
• Micro- and macro-evol­u­tion­ary pro­cesses shap­ing proka­ryot­ic gen­omes (star­ted in 2019)
• Integ­ra­tion of spe­ci­ation research (star­ted in 2021)
• Evol­u­tion of wild anim­al micro­bi­o­mes (star­ted in 2021)
• Evol­u­tion­ary implic­a­tions of socially trans­ferred mater­i­als (star­ted in 2023)
• TIBBE – The Integ­rat­ive Bio­logy of Brain Evol­u­tion (star­ted in 2023)
• Joint evol­u­tion of dis­pers­al and mat­ing sys­tems (star­ted in 2023)
• With­in-organ­ism con­flicts and organis­mal adapt­a­tion (star­ted in 2023)

For fur­ther inform­a­tion or enquir­ies, please con­tact the chair of the STN com­mit­tee, Franjo Weiss­ing (f.j.weissing@rug.nl).

The STN Committee,

Franjo Weiss­ing (chair), Troy Day, Simone Immler, and Yan­nis Michalakis