Innovative Training Networks

ITN supports competitively selected joint research training and/or doctoral programmes, implemented by partnerships of universities, research institutions, research infrastructures, businesses, SMEs, and other socio-economic actors from different countries across Europe and beyond.

Partnerships take the form of collaborative European Training Networks (ETN), European Industrial Doctorates (EID) or European Joint Doctorates (EJD).

Each programme should have a clearly identified supervisory board co-ordinating network-wide training and establishing active and continuous communication and exchange of best practice among the participating organisations to maximise the benefits of the partnership.

The programme should exploit complementary competences of the participating organisations, and enable sharing of knowledge, networking activities, the organisation of workshops and conferences.

Training responds to well identified needs in defined research areas, with appropriate references to

At researcher level:

Increased set of skills, both research-related and transferable ones, leading to improved employability and career prospects both in and outside academia (leading in the longer-term to more successful careers)

Increase in higher impact R&I output and more knowledge and ideas converted into products and services

Greater contribution to the knowledge-based economy and society

At organisation level:

Enhanced cooperation and better transfer of knowledge between sectors and disciplines

Improvement in the quality of training programmes and supervision arrangements

Creation of new networks and enhanced quality of existing ones

Boosting R&I capacity among participating organisations

Increased internationalisation of participating organisations

At system level:

Increase in international, interdisciplinary and intersectoral mobility of researchers in Europe

More structured and innovative doctora