As we delve into some of the highlights of 2024 we’re sure of a few things, it has been 12 months filled to the brim with networking, events, trainings, and new opportunities for the COST Action community.
To put the figures into context, our 324 running COST Actions saw an 11% increase in connections created (from 727,674 to 809,690) between Action participants. Increases in the use of COST Action networking tools were also seen such as 14% more ITC Conference Grants and a 5% increase in STSMs when compared to the year before. In 2024 we also announced the launch of a new Conference Grant for Young Researchers and Innovators so we look forward to even more mobility in 2025.
60 new COST Actions were approved by COST’s Committee of Senior Officials (CSO) back in May and kicked off between September and November. These new research networks address many novel and interesting topics from digital technologies to improve civic engagement, optimising insect nutrition, augmented reality in forestry, and alternative approaches to automated cancer detection. A further six COST Innovators Grants were also awarded to ending COST Actions that demonstrated significant innovation potential. Finally, our Open Call for new COST Actions (oc-2024-1) closed with the highest number of proposals ever submitted to a COST Open Call (a 62% increase compared to last year). To close the year our Scientific Committee issued a statement to call for reinforced funding to ensure COST’s continued role as a capacity builder.
The COST Academy was also very active in 2024. Through our in-house training programme we equip the COST community with the tools & skills they need to achieve their Action goals. Numerous new training opportunities were offered during the year to complement the existing portfolio such as ‘Introduction to Canva’ and ‘WordPress for beginners’ for our Science Communication Coordinators. Discover more about COST Academy in our new behind the scenes video.
And at COST we always try to practise what we preach when it comes to communications. We provide stewardship to all COST Actions and their designated Science Communication Coordinators in order to support the best possible communication, dissemination, and exploitation of Action results. But we’re also very active animating our social media accounts (X, LinkedIn, Facebook), writing stories, producing videos, releasing new publications and studies, supporting our COST Actions in issuing press releases, and sending our monthly newsletter to promote news and opportunities from the COST Programme and our COST Action networks.
And just like the R&I community we support, we don’t operate alone. Together with our partners COST attended the Science Summit at the 79th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA78) in New York to co-organised the session ‘Hurdles to International Science Cooperation: Data Sharing & Management’ with the U.S. National Science Foundation AccelNET Program, celebrated the 5th anniversary of the South Africa-COST partnership, partnered with the Circular Bio-based Europe Joint Undertaking (CBE JU) to organise a COST Connect event on biobased resources, accompanied the European Commission to the Western Balkans Ministerial Meeting in Skopje to highlight our role in promoting research cooperation in the region, and showcased how COST Actions are contributing to United Nations objectives with representatives from different UN agencies in Brussels. To close the year we launched our Cross-Cutting Activity on career development for young researchers together with (young) researchers, career advisory experts and key stakeholder organisations.
Thanks for your support and engagement in 2024 and here’s to even more networking, connections, trainings, events, and opportunities for researchers and innovators in 2025!