New projects and scholarships granted following the first call of APPEAR III

7. December 2021 ScholarshipDevelopment Research
opening ceremony of test plot
In a competitive selection process 8 projects and 18 preparatory funding projects could be selected for funding out of 69 applications. Thus, the overall success rate for all instruments in the first call was 38%.

The first Call of the third programme phase was open from 1 March to 31 May 2021. At the end of November, the APPEAR selection board, comprising of seven national and international experts and chaired by the Austrian Development Agency (ADA) met to discuss and deliberate the project and scholarship applications which had been submitted during the first call. After a presentation of the projects by the APPEAR Office each formally correct project proposal with a total average review score of over 70 (of max 100 points) was discussed and evaluated according to the APPEAR criteria, guiding principles and added values. In a competitive process 8 project applications could be finally approved for funding: 5 Academic Partnership and 3 Advanced Academic Partnership Projects. 37 % of these projects will be coordinated by institutions in the partner countries and 62 % by female scientists. In addition, 18 preparatory funding projects were selected according to the average scores given by all selection board members. 

The success rate for preparatory funding was 62%, for Academic Partnership 18% and for Advanced Academic Partnership Projects 33%. None of the submitted Extended Impact Partnership proposals did meet the required criteria and were asked to re-submit revised proposals for the second call in spring 2022. Currently the contracts for the selected projects and preparatory funding projects are being processed. The selected projects will start their project activities in January 2022 at the earliest. 

Moreover, 6 scholarship recipients were selected out of 21 applications (with a success rate of 28%).