CHRONIC will develop 13 informed ERA professionals through a training programme that includes training-by-research, joint courses covering technical, scientific, ethical, and transferable skills and a cross-sectoral secondment program.
Through these vehicles, CHRONIC will:
- establish an overview of the importance of chronic low-dose effects for populations, communities and ecosystems, and develop tools and methods to assess impact of low chronic exposure across systems;
- train a new generation of interdisciplinary risk assessors in quantitative, mechanistically-based methods needed for a holistic understanding of cause and effect of multi-stressor exposures in our changing world, and
- provide ESRs with a broad perspective of their future career, and increased employability, by supporting them in developing skills to communicate to scientific, industry, regulators, NGO and the public.
Innovative Training Network of Early Stage Researchers (ESRs)
The consortium expertise will allow CHRONIC to set a benchmark in the European Higher Education Area as the first research training initiative in low chronic exposure impacts on behaviour, immune modulation and genotoxicity traits for different organisms (plants, invertebrates, vertebrates) and ecosystems (freshwater, sediment, soil). CHRONIC will develop 13 informed ERA professionals through a training program that includes training by-research, joint courses covering technical, scientific, ethical, and transferable skills and a cross-sectoral secondment program.
There are training programs for scientific and transferable skills for the ESRs as well as that there are conferences and project meetings. This enable ESRs to attain knowledge on other scientific work on test ecosystems and receive hands-on training on new research methods and also in regulatory frameworks by working with industry/governmental partner institutions (see Table 1).
Table 1: Main training elements, including Network-Wide Training Events, Conferences and Contribution of Beneficiaries and Partner Organisations
| Main Training Elements (including Network Events & Conferences) | Total ECTS | Project Month | ||||
| Reference | Science-based | Transferable skills | Scientific meeting | |||
| 1 | Training Event A online, 6 days | Principles of RA and HA; merits and limitations for addressing low chronic exposure scenarios | Personal development plan | Kick-off meeting with all ESRs | 4 | 6 |
| 2 | Training Event B Wageningen, 6 days | Toxicokinetics of low chronic exposure | Ethical issues in science and business | State-of-the-art; ESRs present research plans | 4 | 12 |
| 3 | Training Event C Aveiro, 5 days | Toxicodynamics of low chronic exposure scenarios | ESRs present Personal CDP; Plan publications | 3 | 18 | |
| 4 | Training Event D Aarhus, 5 days | Interactions of natural stressors with chemical stressors | Midterm reflection on personal development | Mid-term progress review; Brainstorm on potential spin-offs | 4 | 24 |
| 5 | Training Event E Roskilde, 5 days | Effective communication of science to different audiences, including framing theories | Meet & greet with mentors and different stakeholders (e.g., industry, policymakers) | 3 | 30 | |
| 6 | Training Event F Cambridge, 5 day | Skills for career development | New grants and prospects for future collaboration; | 3 | 36 | |
| 7 | Final Workshop To be determined, 4 days | Use science- and transferable acquainted for collaboration and cooperation under pressure to write cross-cutting paper & final reflection on personal development | Finalize strategy for post-project follow-up and exploitation/ SETAC | N/A | 42 | |
All partners involved in the Training Events participate in the Scientific meetings. The scientific meeting will have a duration of 1 day each.
Additionally, all ESRs will have three visits/ secondments to consortium partners.