The call for proposals for research projects funded by the BMBF (Federal Ministry of Education and Research) is published once a year in late summer via the GUC and the GUC project coordinators in Ulm, Stuttgart and Tübingen and via the GUC. Teams of researchers from all faculties of the GUC and a German partner university or research institution are eligible to apply. New research collaborations can be initiated or existing collaborations can be deepened. The approved project budget is bound to the respective calendar year and cannot be shifted into the next year.

All required documents have to be submitted as one pdf-file. The PDF must contain the following sections:

• A detailed and comprehensive project proposal, using the provided template and structure (max. 6 pages)
• A preliminary budget calculation (max. 2 pages)
• CVs and a list of 5 most relevant publications per included academic (max. 1 page per principal investigator)
• Signed commitment letter by the German cooperation partner(s) and the responsible GUC academic

Proposals exceeding the page limit will be rejected without further consideration

Representatives of the GUC, of Ulm University as well as of the Universities of Stuttgart and Tübingen, meet and discuss the applications in late autumn.

Selection Criteria:

• Qualifications of participants/ project members

• Scientific quality of the cooperative research project (academic excellence)

• Added value of the collaboration to GUC strategic goals, strengthening of cooperation with Germany, and long-term perspective of the collaboration

• Involvement of young academics

• Cooperation with partner universities in Baden-Württemberg (Ulm, Stuttgart, and Tübingen) is given preference in case of equal academic quality and relevance

• In case of continued co-operations between same partners: the existing track record of the cooperation (e.g., in terms of joint publications)

• Initiation of new co-operations is positively considered

The applicants are notified of acceptance or rejection via e-mail by the end of the year. The accepted projects are then asked to update their budget plan and hand it in again as a self-calculating excel file.

After handing in the budget plans, a letter of acceptance and funding guidelines are issued. After these are signed by the Egyptian and German project coordinators, the projects can begin to execute their planned activities. The reimbursement procedures are described in the respective section.