NEURON Joint Call for Proposals 2010 "European Research Projects on Mental Disorders"

13 funding organizations participated in the first ERA-Net NEURON joint call for proposals "European Research Projects on Mental Disorders". They consented on a joint implementation process, which is depicted in the following summary.

Funding organizations

Name	Country
Austrian Science Fund (FWF)	Austria
Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)	Canada
Fonds de la Recherche en Santé du Québec (FRSQ)	Canada
Academy of Finland (AKA)	Finland
National Research Agency (ANR)	France
Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)	Germany
Chief Scientist Office, Israel Ministry of Health (CSO-MOH)	Israel
Ministry of Health (MOH)	Italy
National Research Fund (FNR)	Luxemburg
National Centre for Research and Development (NCBiR)	Poland
National Centre for Programme Management (CNMP)	Romania
Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN)	Spain
Institute of Health Carlos III (ISCIII)	Spain

Topic
The topic of the second NEURON call was shaped during a scientific workshop with renowned international experts in the area and the NEURON Scientific Advisory Board. The call addressed the breadth of research from understanding basic mechanisms of disease through proof-of-concept clinical studies in man. It included research on depression and bipolar disorders, phobia and anxiety disorders, schizophrenia and psychotic disorders, substance use disorders, and other mental disorders. Research on dementia was not included in the present call.

Timeline

May 04, 2009	Scientific workshop "Mental illness and neural dysfunction"
January 19, 2010	Call for proposals published
March 9, 2010	Deadline for submission of pre-proposals
May, 2010	Selection of a short list of 32 pre-proposals
June 15, 2010	Deadline for submission of full proposals
September 7, 2010	Peer Reviewer Panel meeting, ranking list
October 13, 2010	Funding decision
February, 2011	Start of projects

Proposal submission
Research consortia were to consist of 3 - 5 research groups from at least 3 NEURON partner countries. The two-step process required submission of short pre-proposals describing the research idea. From these a short list was selected and the respective consortia invited to submit full proposals. Both pre- and full proposals had to be submitted by the coordinator electronically. A proposal template and guidelines were provided by the Joint Call Secretariat in order to support the applicants in terms of the proposal format.

Peer Review
In order to properly cover all aspects of the broad topic, 35 experts were recruited from NEURON partner countries and beyond. Each pre-proposal was assessed in writing by at least 2, most of them by 3 evaluators. The assessments were based on the criteria listed in the call for proposals and consisted of a global score of 1-4 (1 being best) and additional comments. The assessments were used as a basis for selecting 32 pre-proposals whose coordinators were invited by the Joint Call Secretariat to submit full proposals. For each of those, 3 independent written assessments were collected from 11 experts who served on the Peer Review Panel (PRP). During a PRP meeting, each of the proposals was discussed thoroughly, and eventually 21 were recommended for funding and ranked.

Funding decision
The final funding decision was made by the funding bodies participating in the joint call for proposals. Starting with the best proposal and following the ranking list, as many proposals were selected for funding as the budgetary constraints of each funding organization allowed for.

In result of this step, 11 projects comprising 47 research groups (Principal Investigators) from 8 countries were successful. The total funding volume amounted to about 10 million euros for 3 years.

In the last step, the Principal Investigators were to contact the respective funding body in their country and to fulfill the legal and administrative requirements in order to receive the grant.

The projects started in February 2011.

Call statistics

Pre-proposals
Submitted: 103 consortia, 402 research groups, 80 million €
Excluded for formal reasons: 1
Successful (invited to submit full proposals): 32 consortia, 26.7 million €

Fig. 1: Principal Investigators (research groups) per country

Coordinators (submitted pre-proposals)	Coordinators (successful pre-proposals)
- Germany (40) - France (18) - Canada (14) - Spain (12) - Italy (8) - Israel (6) - Austria (3) - Finland (1) - Luxembourg (1)	- Germany (15) - France (7) - Canada (5) - Spain (2) - Italy (2) - Finland (1)

   
Gender distribution
- 98/402 research groups led by female PI (24%),
- 28/103 consortia coordinated by female PI (27%).

- 40/129 successful research groups led by female PI (31%)
- 13/32 successful consortia coordinated by female PI (41%)

Full proposals
Submitted: 32 consortia, 129 research groups, 26.7 million €
Successful: 11 consortia, 47 research groups, ca. 10 million €
Topics of successful proposals:
Depression (3), Schizophrenia (3), Drug abuse (2), Autism (2), Impulse Control Disorder (1)

Fig. 2: Principal Investigators (research groups) per country

Coordinators (submitted full proposals)	Coordinators (successful full proposals)
- Germany (15) - France (7) - Canada (5) - Spain (2) - Italy (2) - Finland (1)	- Germany (6) - France (4)) - Italy (1)

 Gender distribution
- 40/129 subprojects submitted by female PI (31%),
- 13/32 consortia coordinated by female PI (41%).

- 14/47 successful subprojects with female PI (30%),
- 5/11 successful consortia coordinated by female PI (45%).