The Career-FIT PLUS COFUND Programme proposes 50 three-year Career Development Fellowships to be situated in Ireland’s National Technology Centres with mandatory secondment to industry. The programme will be managed from the Research & Innovation Division of Enterprise Ireland (EI), a national industrial development agency with a mission that targets developing people and their capability for driving enterprise growth. The Career-FIT PLUS programme will have a duration period of 72 months with two calls for proposals. As the successor to the previously funded MSCA COFUND Career-FIT programme, the Career-FIT PLUS offers a maturity of approach with key learnings from the engagement of EI, the Technology Centres and the Fellows in Career-FIT incorporated into the enhanced Career-FIT PLUS programme. These provide for an improved platform for researchers to develop high quality proposals with the Technology Centres and their partner enterprises. It also reinforces a more structured basis for training and mentoring initiatives and actions developed during the implementation of Career-FIT, such as cross-over training across the Technology Centres. There is an intention to position the programme as a more central element of EI’s innovation portfolio, with a particular focus on enhancing the interdisciplinary platforms of the Technology Centres. The proposal is supported by a significant demand from enterprises relevant to the research areas of the Technology Centres. The total budget of the Career-FIT PLUS programme is €13,792,500 of which €5,517,000 is requested for co-funding.

Career-FIT is a new trans-national scheme that offers an opportunity for experienced researchers to develop their careers n market focused applied research in Ireland's Technology Centres. Covering a wide range of academic and industry areas aligned with Ireland's Smart Specialisation Strategy, the 15 Centres were established to encourage greater efficiency in the interaction between researchers, industry, and the public sector, in research that promotes economic growth by its direct relevance to industry agendas. Each multidisciplinary Centre offers excellent facilities and equipment for Fellow use: experienced scientific staff to support the Fellow’s research, and extensive enterprise relationships on which market focused applied research can be progressed. Following two widely publicised calls that seek to attract the highest quality researchers with their own research proposals, the Career-FIT programme offers 50 fellowships of 36 months’ duration for incoming mobility to the Centre Hosts, with an enterprise secondment option during the Fellowship. Selection is through a transparent process based on demonstrated excellence of the applicant, potential of the research programme, host organisation capacity to provide a developmental environment, and training/career development impact of the Fellowship. Fellows are mentored by an experienced Centre mentor(s) concerned not just for their scientific progress but also their training and development in line with agreed career goals. They will also have support from a Professional Development Advisor and will further benefit from participation in a structured development training programme that targets enhancement of personal effectiveness as well as competencies relating to innovation management. As a new programme offering interdisciplinary, intersectoral and international features, the Career-FIT human resource development objectives will guarantee the development of future research and innovation leaders.

Sustain-FIT is an innovative MSCA COFUND programme providing international mobility by funding and implementing 50 three-year incoming fellowships to the Republic of Ireland in the area of industrially focused sustainability research. Sustain-FIT will be run by Enterprise Ireland, the national innovation agency and the Fellows will have the option to be hosted at any of the Irish higher education institutions and public research organisations. The Sustain-FIT research and innovation focus is on the European Green Deal eight policy pillars: clean energy, sustainable industry, building and renovating, sustainable mobility, biodiversity, sustainable food systems, eliminating pollution and climate neutrality. Digitalisation projects that benefit Green Deal objectives are also supported, in line with the Declaration on a Green and Digital Transformation of the EU. Implementation of the programme includes an extensive promotion of recruitment calls to an open, merit-based competition for the applying researchers, founded on equality of opportunities and best practices in international peer review. Applicants will have the freedom to choose their Host Research Organisation (HRO) and Secondment Enterprise, and to define their own research training project. Recruited Fellows will be supported with a dedicated programme management arrangement that has access to the full range of Enterprise Ireland professional supports and HRO supports in a structured career development framework that includes a mandatory 6-12 month intersectoral secondment, high-quality supervisory support from the HROs and Enterprise Secondment partners, access to discipline-specific training and structured transferable skills training, and personal career development support. Sustain-FIT will develop a new cadre of researchers who can move seamlessly to industry in Europe bringing high levels of research expertise in an area of high priority: industrially focused sustainable research.