Constructive Advanced Thinking programme
The Constructive Advanced Thinking (CAT) programme aims at supporting small groups of excellent early-career researchers conducting fundamental research dedicated to developing new ideas to understand and to tackle current or emerging societal challenges.
In addition, the ambition is to help fostering the transformation of these ideas into real-world action as well as to foster future leading networks of advanced thinking.
The CAT programme supports research groups consisting of three to five individuals, headed by an early-career researcher of any discipline, and possibly including PhD students, for a duration up to three years. In order to enable them to engage in conversations and develop their ideas further, the groups are invited to meet for short stays (i.e. maximum two weeks) at participating institutes, where they also get the opportunity to get in contact with the fellows in residence at the institutes as well as local research communities. With few guidelines and a very light application process, CAT is designed to maximize the creativity of groups.
The CAT concept was developed within the framework of the Network of European Institutes for Advanced Studies (NETIAS). The initiative was launched in 2019 and is currently supported by twelve Institutes for Advanced Study across Europe.