A dedicated project manager, Clare Desplats, was recruited at the start of the project. Clare has extensive experience managing MSCA projects and provides guidance and support to the consortium.
ICEBIO beneficiaries hold regular management meetings online and at network-wide training events. Minutes from management meetings will be posted here.
The first ICEBIO Management Meeting was held in Potsdam, Germany on October 12, 2022. Representatives from all host institutions attended the event.
During this meeting, the project manager presented information about:
- The ICEBIO recruitment strategy
- Financial management of the project
- Network events
- Deliverables and milestones and how to manage them
- Secondments
- Project boards (Executive committee, Supervisory board, Research committee, and Outreach and Dissemination committee.
- Dissemination and outreach
She also answered questions from the PI group.
This section of the meeting was followed by a discussion of the fieldwork strategy for the network.
The second ICEBIO management meeting was held during the kickoff meeting in Austria in September 2023. Ten doctoral students were present at the event, but two were unable to attend due to visa issues. All presentations given during the meeting were placed in a BOX folder so that those not present during the meeting were able to view them after the event.
On Thursday September 7th, the day began with general introductions from the PIs and project manager. This was followed by short introductory presentations from the newly recruited doctoral candidates. Those not present were represented by their PIs.
In the afternoon, the project manager gave a general presentation about the rights and obligations of Marie Curie fellows including information about personal career development plans, secondments, outreach activities, training opportunities and where to find information about the project.
The project manager also provided access to a BOX folder with information for all DCs including:
• A copy of the ICEBIO grant agreement.
• Information about how to acknowledge EU funding and a reminder that all peer reviewed publications must be open access plus a link to a high-resolution copy of the EU flag.
• The template for the first year PCDP: personal career development plan along with some guidelines for completing the document
• The list of ICEBIO deliverables and milestones due over the course of the project • The dates of the first four network wide training events • Some information about Outreach activities produced by the EC
• A template for completing semi-annual progress reports along with a spreadsheet indicating the due dates for each person’s report.
• The information required for the ICEBIO website to include all DCs the website.
• A copy of the ICEBIO logo
• An information note for Marie Curie fellows produced by the EC
• Some information about the SNLS allowance
• An ICEBIO Project Overview giving information about the budget, secondments, etc.
The project manager’s presentation was followed by a presentation by the coordinator providing a “big picture” view of the overarching goals of the ICEBIO project with an opportunity for questions from the DCs. This was followed by a discussion of a network wide fieldwork strategy and an action plan to cut down on carbon emissions. This included creating a shared fieldwork file so that team members could see where other teams were sampling to avail of opportunities to collect samples in multiple locations without requiring the whole team to travel. When possible, team members were encouraged to take train transportation rather than flights. The coordinator urged DCs to put forward ideas for future training not included in the original grant agreement.
On Sunday, September 10th, a second part of the management meeting revolved around a discussion of gender balance, risks of sexual harassment and how to combat them, and a more detailed discussion of an outreach strategy for the network. The importance of mutual respect and communication was highlighted, and the DCs were provided with several communication channels to address any concerns or issues when working on their research projects. This included local channels at their host institutions, support from their supervisors and fully confidential discussions with the project manager. The group suggested the creation of an outreach folder where various team members could indicate ideas for outreach activities and opportunities for collaboration. The project manager created a BOX folder with this information.
The management part of the meeting concluded on Sunday with a final day of field training for the DCs on Monday September 11th.