Selection of hosting sites and fellows for EU-FORA Risk Assessment Fellowship Programme

The European Food Risk Assessment Fellowship (EU-FORA) Programme was established to help achieve one of EFSA’s strategic objectives: Strengthening the food risk assessment capacity (including animal health and plant health) and knowledge community across Europe. The EU-FORA programme will establish a regular 12-month learning-by-doing fellowship, the objectives of which are to attract and motivate mid-career professionals to become risk assessors, thus increasing the pool of experts available in Europe; intensify exchange and cooperation among national food safety agencies and EFSA, hence stimulating the involvement of MS in regulatory risk assessment work; contribute to harmonising and further developing food safety risk assessment practices and methodologies across Europe, with the aim of building a common EU culture for risk assessment.

The main focus of the EU-FORA fellowship programme will be targeted to chemical and microbiological risk assessment and, more generally, to activities falling within EFSA’s remit, so as to attract professionals from relevant fields such as: agriculture, biochemistry, bioinformatics, biology, biometrics, biotechnology, chemistry, dietary exposure, environmental sciences, epidemiology, food science, food technology, genetics, health and food safety, human medicine, life sciences, mathematics, microbiology, molecular biology, natural sciences, nutrition, pharmacy, public health, statistics, toxicology, veterinary medicine or related areas.

The specific objectives of this grant call are to: (1) select fellow hosting sites for the training of one or more fellows, for a period of 12 months; and (2) to select fellows as proposed by their institutions of origin. Specifically, the call seeks to identify consortia of hosting sites and fellow sending organisations.

Grant applicants must be included in the list of competent organisations designated by the Member States to assist EFSA with its mission (Article 36 list of eligible organisations)