Within this year’s Horizon2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (MSCA IF) call, the University of Ljubljana, as a host institution, received funding for two highly talented foreign researchers to work on their project ideas. We were also delighted by the approved funding for our first Widening Fellowship project and expected award of four Seals of Excellence.

Two-year funding for the successful project proposal has been granted to Dr Guilhem Poy in collaboration with Prof. Dr Slobodan Žumer from the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of the University of Ljubljana (UL FMF). Dr Poy came to our university from the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon in France where he defended his doctoral thesis in 2017. Under the OPTOSOL project, by merging knowledge of photonics and physics of soft matter they are seeking for new ways of guiding light by means of chiral birefringent media such as cholesteric liquid crystals. The project aims to create a comprehensive model of optical solitons in chiral birefringent media and to develop methods for manipulating optical solitons with topological solitons, which are localized perturbations of the molecular orientation field. Their theoretical and numerical modelling will also be supported through collaboration with the experimental group for physics, optics and photonics of soft matter at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Following a successful application in the MSCA IF call, the European Commission has also invited Dr Danel Ahman in collaboration with Asst. Prof. Dr Matija Pretnar from UL FMF to start the grant preparation. Dr Ahman came to our university from the Prosecco Project Team, Inria Paris. The purpose of their project LiquidEff is to develop new ways of using types in reasoning about the correctness of programs using computational effects, such as memory access, exception raising and handling, probability, or non-determinism. The aim of the project is to develop a general approach based on the algebraic representation of effects, which will contain an expressive modal logic, translation of existing approaches to the new one, practical implementation of the logic in a programming language, and a selection of relevant examples, such as big data analysis and asynchronous parallel programming.

The new Horizon2020 scheme MSCA Widening Fellowships provides an additional opportunity for researchers to work on research and innovation project with the host institution in one of the widening countries (Slovenia, as an EU member state, is an eligible country).

Our first successful project under the Widening scheme, with the acronym NewSiest, has been acquired by a researcher from India, Dr Kavyashree Srinivasa in collaboration with Dr Marko Petrič from University of Ljubljana, Biotechnical Faculty (UL BF).

Two years ago, the Slovenian Research Agency (ARRS) set up a mechanism for national funding of research projects for researchers who are awarded the quality label from European Commission - Seal of Excellence. This year Seals of Excellence will be awarded to the three foreign researchers in cooperation with mentors from UL BF, the Faculty of Arts (UL FF) and one Slovenian researcher from UL FMF.

Since the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships call is highly competitive the University Office for Research is inviting experienced foreign researchers to a two-day workshop MSCA IF Masterclass for the preparation of the projects proposal. The MSCA fellowship is an excellent opportunity that enables faculties and academies to employ the most promising foreign postdoctoral researchers for a period of 1-3 years.

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