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Brian Cahill

Australian television presenter

Jul 15, 2026

1:48
So maybe a little bit into this topic, how initially you get interested in this.
1:54
Well, about 10 years ago, I was the chair of the Marie Curie Alumni Association, and I had a lot of contact with early career researchers who were engaging in international mobility, and in some ways you become a magnet for, uh, researchers who have issues with their fellowship, with their supervisor, and so on.
2:16
So through this time, I-- you feel a responsibility because people contact you, and generally we had, um, kind of both PhD candidates and doctoral networks as well as postdoctoral fellows.
2:31
And particularly with the PhD candidates, because there is a three-year time limit for the funding for the Marie Curie doctoral networks in most countries in Europe, this is not enough to finish your PhD.
2:45
And so this very often is-- creates a problem towards the end of these three years, particularly with international researchers who may be perceived as earning very well.
2:58
But once, once you're not earning anymore, kind of your savings get eaten up, you, you become kind of much more precarious.
3:06
And so this is something which was really for me, it was something that you go around as chair of the association, you go maybe to a conference on microfluidics, and you see kind of somebody who has a poster with Marie Curie, um, kind of logo on it.

16 MINS LATER

19:43
And what about the institutional, uh, level? Uh, if we, uh, have any suggestions for them, of course, to maybe to focus more not only on publishing and funding, but also some introduce new indicators that would help researcher to, um, make use of or a little bit better [laughs] show themselves and be evaluated, of course.

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