Rationale
Talented young scientists quickly move to the best international environments for their research. Creating a highly-visible and competitive BioImage Analysts community that continuously offers and supports the most needed cutting-edge Image Analysis tools and highest-quality services to Life Scientists, will allow Europe to attract the best talents internationally.
Mission of WG7
WG7 will help BioImage Analysts gain more recognition and visibility by fostering the opening of new positions in Europe and by strengthening relations with industry to promote transfer of talent and to push innovative developments. WG7 will devise best-practice guidelines for the career path of these experts, design surveys to scan for the existing curricula of BioImage Analysts, define a consensus Curriculum in Advanced BioImage Analysis, and create a public- and private-Job offer repository.
Short Term Scientific Missions (STSMs)
WG7 will coordinate two innovative Short Term Scientific Missions (STSMs) programmes for individual scientists:
- Early Career Investigators (ECIs)
- experienced BioImage Analysts
to visit a facility, company or laboratory across Europe. STSMs will strategically contribute to the Action’s scientific aim of maximizing image-based research outputs by enabling 1) collaborations on innovative image analysis methods, 2) access to big data analysis technology and image analysis tools for scientists lacking them locally, and 3) knowledge transfer to support careers and regional development. These actions will help boosting career path of image analysts, by detecting early career vocations and increasing skills and know-how of analysts.
These Missions are aimed at supporting individual mobility, strengthening the existing networks and fostering collaborations by allowing early career and also experienced image analysts to visit an institution, laboratory or industry in another participating COST Country or an approved non-COST country institution. Thus, bringing together researchers of different scientific backgrounds and image analysts within international multi-disciplinary projects will increase the potential for scientific breakthroughs, high-impact publications, creation of new research fields, building of interdisciplinary activities and creating collaborations that may not currently be represented by the local imaging community.
STSMs will be offered on regular competitive calls throughout the duration of the COST Action CA15124 (NEUBIAS), from July 2016 until April 2020. The scientific context will be strictly limited to BioImage-Analysis-driven projects involving Image analysis technology and knowledge transfer in the field of Life Science. Access to and operation of Imaging instrumentation will in general not be considered as a component of the evaluated scientific projects.
The first Open call for STSMs will open in July 2016, information will be made available on this page.