The MER wins the Cristal Collectif CNRS 2024

The CNRS Cristal Collectif is awarded to teams of men and women working in support of research, who have carried out projects of particularly outstanding technical mastery, collective dimension, applications, innovation and outreach. This distinction is awarded in two categories: "direct support for research" and "accompaniment of research". This year, the Mission Europe pour la Recherche team won in Provence, in the "direct support for research" category!

MER, a one-stop shop for European funding applications

Since January 2, 2024, the MER has brought together in a single location the staff of the European units of four institutions: Aix Marseille Université (amU) and its development subsidiary Protisvalor, CNRS, Inserm and IRD. It improves and strengthens the support given to research units on the Aix-Marseille site in obtaining European subsidies for their research and innovation projects.

By pooling skills, resources and knowledge, the Mission Europe pour la Recherche aims to simplify and improve the support provided to research units in order to increase their participation in European calls for projects and improve success rates. It is open to all scientists covered by the four founding institutions, whatever their employer.

A mission co-created by its agents

The fruit of long-standing collaboration between the four partner institutions, the MER is also the result of co-creation by its own staff. In addition to pooling resources, the team also defined common processes and built the mission's activities together.

This physical grouping, combined with the implementation of common processes and the sharing of skills, led to the creation of this one-stop shop, based on a shared operating model. Its ambition: to guarantee identical, individualized support throughout the site, irrespective of the management supervision of the units concerned.

Innovative and ambitious, it is this unique mutualization format for research, as well as its collective dimension, that has been rewarded by the CNRS collective crystal!