Organisation and Approach
Recognising that the most productive period in a scientific career is often the first five years following the completion of the PhD, this programme focuses on post-doctoral research. In addition, UNESCO-IHE in collaboration with its partners augments its capacity building offers with this programme and contributes to building the necessary research capacity in the countries of the study area. The post-doctoral researchers will undertake their research under the guidance of a supervision team that includes a professor of UNESCO-IHE and a professor of a partner institute, key staff members from UNESCO-IHE research cores and partner institutions, and further representatives from stakeholders.
The duration of the research project is 18 months. All post-doctoral researchers are employee of or hosted by a partner institute from the region. They did not enter a working contract with UNESCO-IHE, but obtained a research fellowship which was granted through the partner institute (all knowledge institutes from the region of the study area). The post-doctoral fellows are expected to come UNESCO-IHE, Delft, The Netherlands, to obtain specialised training and supervision and interact with other groups for shorter periods, i.e. generally for a maximum of 4 months of a total of 18 months programme.
All fellows have demonstrated their capability to conduct independent and high quality research resulting in peer-reviewed international journal publications.
Meetings and Dissemination of Results
During the 18 months programme the following meetings have been or will be held to stimulate cooperation, synergies and interdisciplinary research:
- Inception workshop
- Date: 26-29 April 2010
- Duration: 1 week, incl. specialised training
- Location: UNESCO-IHE, Delft, Netherlands,
- Participation: all post-doctoral researchers and UNESCO-IHE supervisors, relevant UNESCO-IHE mentors/collaborators, if possible partner representatives and members of the SAC
- Integration workshop
- Date: early December 2010 (to be confirmed)
- Duration: 2-3 days
- Location: Mekong Region (to be confirmed)
- Participation: all post-doctoral researchers and respective supervisors, mentors/collaborators, members of the SAC as far as possible
- Synthesis workshop (‘Final ProACC Symposium’)
- Date : 18th month of project
- Duration: 2 days mainly internal workshop and last day ‘symposium day’ for the general public (>200 participants)
- Location: UNESCO-IHE, Delft, Netherlands, at a partner institute (e.g. MRC, AIT, HWRU) or connected to a regional scientific event (e.g. Annual Mekong Flood Forum, Yellow River Forum, Yangtze River Forum)
- Participation: all post-doctoral researchers and supervisors from UNESCO-IHE and partner institution, other collaborators, representatives from stakeholders, members of the SAC and other interested parties
- Proceedings: Short papers should be presented for each project; in addition, further synthesis papers should also be presented, the papers will be compiled into special proceedings
It is anticipated that the dissemination of project outputs will take place in various ways, such as:
- Proceedings of PRoACC Symposium
- Several peer-reviewed journal articles per project as well as joint articles originating from cluster projects
- Special sessions at a major international conference (e.g. Stockholm Water Week 2011, EGU, AGU, Annual Mekong Flood Forum etc.)
- Special issue of an international journal (e.g. Climatic Change)