Vol. 25 No. 3
May - June 2003

2004 ICSU Grants Program–IUPAC Applications

In order to promote international scientific and technological activities that contribute to the benefit and well being of society, the International Council for Science (ICSU) offers a grants program to support collaborative scientific initiatives of the ICSU "family." This year, ICSU called for applications for activities planned for 2004, and which preferably focus on one of the following themes:

• science and technology for sustainable development
• capacity building and science education
• science/policy interface
• dissemination of data information on science and technology
• emerging science and technology–creation of new knowledge

Proposed activities should involve scientists from the global scientific community, across scientific disciplines and national borders. Applicants are expected to develop joint activities and to collaborate with other eligible bodies, as well as with ICSU’s International Scientific Associates, National Scientific Members, and National Scientific Associates in preparing and submitting proposals.

Within IUPAC, application information was disseminated in November 2002, and the officers were invited to review within their divisions and committees which projects could be developed into suitable applications. By the deadline of 1 March 2003, two applications were completed and submitted with the collaborative support of other ICSU members:

• Interdisciplinary Harmonized Approach to Metrological Traceability of Chemical Measurement Results, co-support from the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP)
• Establishment of a System to implement the Global Sharing of Chemical Education Reading Material with the Aid of Bi-Directional Machine Translation, co-support from the Science Council of Japan, the Committee on Capacity Building in Science, and the Federation of Asian Scientific Academies and Societies

In both cases, "seed" projects have been funded by IUPAC.

In addition, IUPAC has endorsed the support of three applications from other ICSU eligible bodies:

• Toxicology Postgraduate Research in Developing Countries, by International Union of Toxicology (IUTOX)
• Network of Women Physical Scientist in Africa, by IUPAP
• Foundation of an African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, by International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (IUTAM)

Each proposal will be reviewed by ICSU in terms of scientific merit, relevance to their priority themes, innovation, visible and measurable outputs, potential for developing follow-on activities, interdisciplinary and international nature, and the impact of the ICSU support on the proposed activity. Successful applications will be announced later this year. Brief outlines and objectives of submitted proposals are provided below [linked from titles above].