In 2018, UPF launched the Planetary Wellbeing initiative, a project that demonstrates the University’s commitment to the major challenges of the 21^st century.  The basic premise upholds that during the last century, mankind made tremendous progress in improving the well-being of society but it came at a high price: an unprecedented rate of exploitation of natural resources and producing unacceptable inequalities in health and wealth. In this context, UPF has decided to focus its energy on reacting to this situation, which poses a challenge in the various fields of knowledge and education of the University. In this context, the UPF Board of Governors has approved a research call to provide an initial boost to this project.

The call, endowed with 146,000 euros, hinges around two strategies: to support a new generation of researchers and academics with a strong focus on global well-being (strategy 1) and to promote and encourage multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary research and partnerships concerning the issue (strategy 2). In this sense, the four types of approved aid are expected to help identify a community of scientists who feel questioned by these global challenges and are ready to explore synergies with other disciplines to address these challenges.

In this first edition, the call is framed in a broad and flexible concept of global well-being, which may include any research that contributes to developing new skills in any of the areas listed below. However, all proposals must have an interdisciplinary approach. The proposed areas are as follows:

• Co-benefits for health and the environment
• Integration of environmental protection in health systems
• Climate change
• Clean energy
• Low environmental impact food production and healthy diets
• Integrated solutions for land use
• Urban studies
• Global governance
• Global inequalities
• Sustainable development
• Poverty
• Ageing
• Global education
• Global health
• Animal, human and social welfare

Four types of grants

Strategy 1. Promotion of a new generation of academics on Planetary Wellbeing; two types of grants are envisaged:

• Grants for UPF PhD students to take part in various activities in the area of Planetary Wellbeing. Up to 4,000 euros will be awarded per application (although the action has a ceiling of 8,000 euros) and, among the eligible expenses are mobility visits or stages, training, attending conferences and workshops and the organization of workshops,
• Grants for postdoctoral researchers, with the same goal as above. Up to 10,000 euros will be awarded per application (although the action has a ceiling of 50,000 euros). In addition to the above items, expenses related to the supervision of doctoral and master’s degree students will also be considered eligible.

Strategy 2. Promotion of multidisciplinary research on Planetary Wellbeing; two types of grants are envisaged: These actions may range from pilot projects to support future applications with initial data, to the organization of work meetings with national and international researchers to work on these proposals. Two types of grants are envisaged:

• Call for pilot research projects and the establishment of research partnerships on Planetary Wellbeing. Up to 20,000 euros will be awarded per application (although the action has a ceiling of 67,000 euros). The action seeks to promote collaborative research, facilitating the search for external sources to carry out collaborative projects of greater impact and, therefore, to promote the submission of proposals to international competitive tenders.
• Call for the organization of workshops and conferences around Planetary Wellbeing. Up to 6,000 euros will be awarded per application (although the action has a ceiling of 21,000 euros) to cover travel and accommodation expenses. Proposals must be submitted and led, at least two professors from different disciplines at UPF.

Proposals will be evaluated by an Evaluation Committee composed of between three and six permanent UPF lecturers and researchers from different disciplines or fields. The decisions regarding the awarding of the grants will be published on 30 June 2019 at the latest.