About SMASH

Welcome to SMASH, an innovative, intersectoral, career-development training program co-funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND Actions (MSCA COFUND) for the 2023-2028 period. SMASH aims to enhance the research excellence and career prospects of outstanding postdoctoral researchers from around the world. Top Slovenian institutions will host fifty talented individuals, to offer them the opportunity to develop their research ideas based on access to the data-science potential of VEGA, one of Europe’s newest High-Performance Computers. Mobility options and top-level training in scientific and transferable skills will be additional priorities of SMASH, made possible by the program’s exciting group of Associated Partners in Slovenia, the EU, and beyond.

The SMASH fellows will be situated in Slovenia, one of Europe's youngest and most dynamic countries. Slovenia is the green heart of Europe, with excellent research infrastructure, a dynamic business environment and a large number of start-ups and SMEs per capita in the EU.

SMASH host institutions are 3 top Slovenian research organizations :

• University of Nova Gorica, the program’s beneficiary
• University of Ljubljana
• Jožef Stefan Institute

and two major governmental institutions:

• Institute of Information Science
• Slovenian Environment Agency

This core of scientific excellence is complemented by a very varied group of SMASH associated partners, including some of the most successful Slovenian SMEs like Cosylab, winner of the European Business Award 2019, and Sinergise, European Earth Observation Company of the Year 2018, top EU centers, like Gravitation and Astroparticle Physics at the University of Amsterdam, and world-leading institutions like CERN and UC Berkeley (host to two Nobel laureates from the fields of SMASH).