Network Organisation

Consisting of the network coordinator (NC), Prof. Dr. Edwin Bremer, and the Project Management Office, the Management Team (MT) is in charge of all administrative, contractual, financial and organisational management tasks within InnoCAR-T, with the NC being responsible for the overall monitoring and coordination of any scientific, training, dissemination as well as exploitation-related activity at consortium level. The MT serves as a ‘helpdesk’ for all network partners, assisting them with any administrative, financial and regulatory questions in their day-to-day work. Also, the MT is the single point of contact between the network and the European Commission (EC). The MT will monitor adherence to contractual obligations and solicit, compile and submit all required financial, managerial, and scientific progress reports to the EC. To facilitate internal communications within network, the MT hosts a password-protected internal project management platform enabling data storage and file-sharing, which provides all consortium members with an up-to-date overview of the project status and documentation.

The Steering Committee (SC) is the strategy body that oversees the strategic, technological and scientific development of InnoCAR-T. With the SC being chaired by the network coordinator, each institute hosting Doctoral Candidate (DC) activities is represented by one delegate in the Steering Committee, including beneficiaries that are not WP leaders. The SC aims to facilitates communication both between academic and industrial partners, as well as between partners and the DCs to guarantee that the training objectives be met. Moreover, the SC will monitor the progress of the scientific work packages (WP 1-2) and corresponding tasks, ensure full exploitation of network synergies, and suggest adjustments as the scientific work plan evolves both within and outside the network. For those scientific matters, the SC will actively engage with the scientific WP leaders. In case of deviations from the agreed description of work, the SC will notify partners and DCs and decide on potential remediation actions if needed.

All Doctoral Candidates (DCs) are organised in the DC Assembly, a forum to discuss their specific needs and interests. The ESR assembly communicates experiences gained through working within the network to the Supervisory Board (SB) and has an essential monitoring and evaluation function. It elects one delegate to the SB for the duration of the project. The DC Assembly convenes every year at the network meeting. All DCs will be actively involved in management activities by providing internal reports to their supervisors/co-supervisors, summarising all activities of the individual projects. These internal reports will be used as basis for the Midterm Report to be submitted to the European Commission.

The Supervisory Board (SB) of InnoCAR-T is composed of the network coordinator, representatives of all beneficiaries and partner organisations and senior scientists in charge of DC supervision, a representative of the DCs to be elected by the DC assembly, and an External Advisory Committee (EAC). The EAC comprises two excellent, independent researchers, who are recognised leaders in the field. The role of the EAC is to provide external judgement to the SB on the efficiency and effectiveness of the scientific work and training undertaken. To this end, the EAC points out any lack of competitiveness in the quality of the research or training, but also highlights positive results achieved.

The SB is responsible for decisions concerning: the successful recruitment across participating institutions; potential re-allocation of researcher-months in the case of a partner failing to recruit successfully; allocation of short-term/secondment travel grants; grants to external participants based on applications and scientific merit; allocation and spending of the centralized training budget for training, schools, courses and conferences; monitoring ethical considerations of animal experiments and on-going research efforts. Finally, the SB ensures that the complimentary strengths of the network partners are optimally exploited.