Short-Term Scientific Missions (STSM) are exchange research visits to an institution or laboratory in another COST country or an approved member of our network. They are aimed at supporting individual mobility, fostering collaboration between individuals and sharing of new techniques and knowledge. The focus is on establishing new connections between laboratories, ideally between one in an ITC* and one in a non-ITC country.
STSM applicants can be PhD students, postdoctoral fellows or established researchers. Visits can last 5 – 90 days, except for early career investigators (up to 8 years post PhD) – their visits can last 5 – 180 days. They need to be carried out in their entirety within a single Grant Period and always within the Action’s lifetime. The STSM grantee has 30 calendar days from the end date of the mission to submit a scientific report.
Check the ongoing Funding calls! The applications need to be submitted via the website https://e-services.cost.eu/stsm.
STSM grants do not necessarily cover all expenses related to undertaking a given mission. Each grant can be up to 2500 € (3500 € for missions with a duration of 91 – 180 days) including flight with a maximum of 160 € per day for accommodation and meal expenses. Please, include in the application a detailed and realistic break-down of the costs that you expect to occur.
Vademecum on STMS can be found in Documents page (Section 8).
The STSM user guide can be downloaded here.
*ITCs are less research-intensive COST member states, including Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Croatia, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Serbia and Turkey.