The TIRIS initiative focuses on three pillars corresponding to key societal challenges: understanding and promoting good health and well-being; understanding global change and its impact on societies; accelerating sustainable transitions: mobility, energy, resources and industrial change.
The Blockbuster Programme aims to attract researchers or research professors demonstrating exceptionally high academic excellence to the Toulouse site, with a research and/or training programme showing a good level of interdisciplinarity and falling within one of these three pillars.
The programme
Those recruited are expected to remain in one of the member institutions or National Research Organisations (ONR) partnering with the University of Toulouse. The programme offers six recruitment opportunities over the ten years of the project. It is part of a drive to support institutions and ONRs in the Toulouse area in their efforts to strengthen research and training capabilities at the highest level. The ambition is to give already widely recognised academic communities the opportunity to further strengthen their skills in order to consolidate their position among the world’s best in their respective fields. The programme contributes to the development of the UT’s common strategy based on its areas of excellence, enhancing its international visibility and attractiveness.
Preparation of applications
The scheme is a package worth up to €500k per person recruited. Within this budget, expenditure on junior staff (Master’s, PhD, post-doc), equipment, operating costs and teaching hours is eligible and must be incurred before the end of the programme (by 31 December 2032 at the latest). Exceptionally, part of the budget may be used to pay months of salary or salary supplements for the person recruited and, where applications are of equal quality, priority will be given to applications that are already well advanced in the recruitment process by one of TIRIS’s partner institutions.
It is expected that each proposed recruitment will be supported by at least one of TIRIS’s partners (institution or ONR). Each application and the use of the planned budget envelope must therefore be worked out with the partner(s) submitting the application. The work will be carried out at the appropriate levels, both in terms of research and training, where justified.
> For detailed information, please refer to the complete Blockbuster programme document.
Éligibilité
- The programme is aimed at international candidates with a high level of scientific expertise (minimum 10 years of experience after completing a PhD).
- The candidate’s research topics must fall within at least one of the TIRIS pillars.
- The research unit and, where applicable, the teaching department hosting the candidate must be affiliated with at least one of TIRIS’ partner institutions or ONRs.
- The candidate’s scientific excellence and the international impact of their research work.
- The candidate’s integration into the Toulouse site and the expected added value of the academic project for the site community.
- Evidence of the candidate’s willingness to integrate into the University of Toulouse and the degree of progress made in terms of the possibility of retaining the recruited person. The progress made in giving the recruited person the possibility of remaining at the site will be a determining factor in the selection process by the recruitment panel.
- Quality of the candidate’s host unit.
Each application will be assessed in two stages. An initial assessment will be carried out by an ad hoc committee made up of external experts from the Toulouse site and appointed by the TIRIS Executive Committee. A second assessment will be carried out within the institution(s) or ONR(s) submitting the application, in accordance with their own procedures. This second assessment may be carried out as part of a standard recruitment procedure by the institution(s) or ONR(s) concerned, or as part of a specific procedure that the institution(s)/ONR(s) have chosen to implement for this type of position.