Call for proposals: supporting young scientists

The initiative supports young European scientists starting their career in Earth science for a period of two years to undertake innovative research projects that address the key scientific challenges of ESA’s Earth observation science strategy.

By providing this opportunity, ESA will support the next generation of Earth scientists to improve our knowledge of the Earth system while maximising the scientific return of Earth observation data from ESA and its Third Party Missions.

Proposals can now be submitted until 24 August.

ESA will then select up to nine postdoctoral scientists from the Agency’s Member States that put forward innovative research projects where ESA data may contribute to understanding our planet.

Selected candidates will have the option to carry out part of their research in an ESA centre as a visiting scientist.

The Changing Earth Science Network initiative was launched in 2009, supporting a first set of 10 young scientists from seven Member States.

A second call in 2010 resulted in another group of 10 projects enlarging the geographical distribution of the projects to nine countries. These projects addressed all the different areas of Earth science, including topics such as the global study of carbon dioxide and methane dynamics, the synergistic use of data from ESA’s Envisat satellite to enhance the characterisation of ocean–atmosphere fluxes, the development of novel methods to monitor glacier dynamics in Greenland and the improvement of fire characterisation using data from Envisat’s MERIS instrument.

The Changing Earth Science Network initiative was developed as one of the main programmatic components of ESA’s Support To Science Element.

To learn more about this research opportunity, please visit the following link:

http://due.esrin.esa.int/stse/cesn/cesn_opencall.php