The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) accelerates its activities on reversing brain drain in recent years. Through European Union Marie Curie Actions and European Research Council Programme 235 researchers; through national funds of BİDEB (Science Fellowships and Grant Programmes Department of TUBITAK) 360 researchers have successfully reintegrated Turkey in previous 8 years, which makes 595 researchers in total.
EU 7th Framework Programme which supports the “brain circulation” has been coordinated by TÜBİTAK since 2007. In this regard, a series of conferences, namely, “Destination Turkey: European and National Funding Opportunities for Brain Circulation” have been organized by TÜBİTAK since 2010. These events, aiming at creating awareness on funding mechanisms that can be used by researchers wishing to reintegrate Turkey, have been organized in 12 different locations and reached to 500 high qualified researchers in America and Europe continents.
Research Funding Allowance Has Increased Up To 30 Thousand TL
The rules and procedures of “TUBITAK 2232 Reintegration Research Fellowship Program” which has been introduced in 2010 in order to encourage researchers to reintegrate Turkish Research Area, has been updated in 2012. In case of recruitment of researchers, condition of fellowship suspension and transfer to partial fellowship status has been removed. The recruited researchers would continue to get the full fellowship amount.
In addition to post-doc researchers, university graduates and master degree researchers has been started to be funded by the fellowship programme with a research budget up to 25000 TL. In 2014, entitlement system has been introduced to the fellowship programme. The application condition of having an acceptance letter from institutions carrying out R&D activities in Turkey has been removed. Research support has been increased to 30000 TL.
In order to expand the scientific and technological contributions, researchers that have been funded through this programme have been granted access to other support programmes of TÜBİTAK.
Since the introduction of the programme (2010), 597 researchers have applied for reintegration to Turkish Research Area and among them 360 researchers have been funded. As of April 2015, 67 applications are under evaluation.
29.05.2015