English version: Diana Taborda
The project "EXCELScIOR" will be presented to the public on the 26th of April at 9am, at Colégio da Trindade – University of Coimbra (UC). The project has been funded with 2.5 million euros under the ERA Chair Actions, a programme of the European Commission that supports universities and research centres so that they can attract and retain qualified human resources and promote research excellence in their fields.
In the morning, the event will have interventions by Luís Pereira de Almeida, Chairman of the Centre for Neuroscience and Cell Biology of the University of Coimbra (CNC-UC) and the Centre for Innovative Biomedicine and Biotechnology (CIBB), and Paulo Oliveira, coordinator of "EXCELScIOR" and vice-president of CNC-UC.
In the afternoon, starting at 4pm, John Ioannidis, ERA Chair Holder of "EXCELScIOR", will address the audience. John Ioannidis is a professor at Stanford University, USA, and "one of the world's leading authorities on meta-research and one of the most influential and cited researchers worldwide, being the right person to create this research group”, says Paulo Oliveira. The Stanford professor will present the lecture "Evaluating research practices and the academic reward system".
The event is open to the general public and the closing session will be conducted by the Rector of the UC, Amílcar Falcão.
According to the coordinator, “this project will allow the creation of a very strong research group at the University of Coimbra in a highly relevant area, meta-research, (or meta-science)", explains the coordinator. "We know that a large part of the science carried out has reproducibility problems, due to errors in the design of the scientific process. This new group at the UC will analyse the quality of the science done at the University of Coimbra in various fields, as well as design processes that will lead to our science becoming increasingly better, and most important, having more impact”.