Minutes of the 1st Belgian Group Meeting
Held at:
Departement Metaalkunde en toegepaste materiaalkunde (MTM), Katholieke Universeit Leuven
9th January 1999
Special guest: ‘Ze Manual Alves-Pereira
Attendees: Karen Attenborough, Constantinos Balictsis, Dietrich Beck, Edy Bertolissi, Christos Dedeloudis, Tamar Feldstein, Raquel Fonseca Benito, Cecile Franc, Inaki Garcia Deigo, Clair Lazareth, Rosalie Luiten, Danny Roeberts, Christian Salles, Robert Stephenson, Patrick Paul Walsh, Reiner Windisch.
Welcomed everyone to the first Belgian Group meeting. A total number of 136 people were contacted:
28 faxes sent: 4 not found, 10 replies of which 4 attended and 5 interested
Emails: 108 successfully sent emails with 31 replies
Thus a total number of 136 invitations were sent and 41 interested replies were received (30% success).
Described the aims for the setting up of the Belgian group: Need for a web-page, mailing-list, creation of local groups at each university or area, updating the databases, contacting as many current and former fellows, the creation of a Welcome document for Newcomers to Belgium and increasing number of co-ordinators. Asked for volunteers!
1. Started by giving a general introduction to the MCFA: New leaflet produced which describes the aims of the association.
2. Web site location and facilities: A new web-site for the Association has been set-up by Joerg Heber (IT responsible on MCFA board). See
http://www.mariecurie.org/. Stressed that it is very important to have a web presence. The association has 50MB space available to host all the web-pages for the national groups. Since space is limited maybe space on other servers maybe the best thing.Now there is an agreement to be signed by the co-ordinators and web-page responsible.
3. The MCFA Structure - Local Groups - Board — EC
Funding of the association is from the European Commission. There are funds available for local meetings and National meetings. The MCFA board (made up of former or current fellows — see
http://www.mariecurie.org/ and klick "what’s new") are always approachable for advice, help or input of ideas.
4. Presentation of 5th Framework
Presented an overview of the different fellowships offered under the 5th framework. Explained the differences between the 4th and 5th frameworks. The details have not yet been finalised so adviced us to regularly check
http://www.cordis.lu/tmr/home.html and http://www.cordis.lu/fifth/home.html.TMR will be re-named as "Improving Human potential".
The first selection deadline will be in May for fellowships starting in Oct/Nov.
A lot of interest was shown and some questions were raised such as: Would it be possible to re-apply for a new fellowship? Since the 5th framework is completely separate from the 4th the answer seemed to be yes, but only 4 years maximum EU funding could be granted to one person.
Since this was the launching meeting of the Belgian group it was agreed that the first aims should be for contacting of as many people as possible, setting-up the web-page, and creation of a fellow document.
Creation of local representatives at each university was agreed as very important as it will be easier to contact people at your own university.
The volunteers for the various positions are summarized below with their respective email addresses.
It was stressed that these are not life sentences and more volunteers are required to keep the workload per person down to a minimum. For everyone at the meeting and those who are interested in the association it is important to keep in mind that we need to contact as many existing MCFA people to make them aware of the recently formed Belgium group. This is especially important since some of the older members will be moving on to bigger and better things and we need newer members take over the vacated positions.
Coordinators of Belgian Group
Karen Attenborough (KUL) karena@imec.be
Rosalie Luiten (ICP) luiten@licr.ucl.ac.be
(Dietrich Beck (KUL) Dietrich.Beck@fys.kuleuven.ac.be)
(Unfortunately Dietrich had to pull out from this position)
Representatives for local groups within Belgium
UCL Raquel Fonseca Benito fonseca@ires.ucl.ac.be
Anna D’Addio daddio@ires.ucl.ac.be
ULB Edy Bertolissi eberto@iridia.ulb.ac.be
VUB Clair Lazareth clazaret@vub.ac.be
KUL Robert Stephenson stephens@imec.be
ICP (@UCL campus Brussels) Rosalie Luiten luiten@licr.ucl.ac.be
Web-page Team
Edy Bertolissi eberto@iridia.ulb.ac.be
Dietrich Beck Dietrich.Beck@fys.kuleuven.ac.be
Anna D’Addio daddio@ires.ucl.ac.be
Robert Stephenson stephens@imec.be
Cecile Franc franc@chor.ucl.ac.be
Christian Salles christian.salles@geo.kuleuven.ac.be
Newcomers document/first newsletter
Paul Walsh paul.walsh@econ.kuleuven.ac.be
Robert Stephenson stephens@imec.be
Cristian Salles christian.salles@geo.kuleuven.ac.be
Reiner Windisch windisch@imec.be
Database/Email
Robert Stephenson stephens@imec.be
Inaki Garcia Diego Inaki.GarciaDiego@mtm.kuleuven.ac.be
Christos Dedeloudis christos.dedeloudis@mtm.kuleuven.ac.be
Contract Inquires Team
Raquel Fonseca Benito fonseca@ires.ucl.ac.be
Christos Dedeloudis christos.dedeloudis@mtm.kuleuven.ac.be
Anna D’Addio daddio@ires.ucl.ac.be
Regarding the local representatives,
we still need people for the Ghent, Antwerp, Liege and Namur areas. If you would like to volunteer then please contact the Karen and Rosalie.This working group was set-up to investigate the difference in contracts and salaries at the different universities in Belgium. There is a big problem in Belgium that different universities have a different system of paying people — in particular some tax the mobility allowance. Hopefully with a concerted action this problem can be rectified. Everyone who attended the people volunteered information regarding their salary and whether they were taxed on their mobility allowance. Another problem was that some universities offered different exchange rates for the Euro.
It was an extremely good meeting, with good attendance. Everyone was really enthusiastic.
To be announced.
Ze’ Manuel kindly offered us the use of the main office in Brussels for our future meetings.