[DATAGOV Core] Feedback needed for meeting with grant office

[Stefania Milan]

Thanks Jonas. My comments in red.

From: Jonas Breuer <j.a.breuer at uva.nl>
Date: Monday, 15 June 2026 at 18:17
To: Stefania Milan <S.Milan at uva.nl>; Core Datagov <core at lists.datagovlab.net>
Subject: Re: Feedback needed for meeting with grant office

I havent’ had any direct problems, only hearing from you. Just some points from before and thoughts on budgets and grant support.


  1.
The Grant office should think along and support the professor, that is what there are for.

yeah, that's what I have tried to politely explain a few times. I worked in universities where that was the case. not here ☹️


  1.
If doubts about the team lunch for kick-off (for example), why not just try it and if there is an audit (which will occur in any case) let the auditor decide whether it's eligible or not. Can the university give a list of types of expenditure that they consider as non-eligible for ERC funding?

I will try again… but hard to get by.


  1.
You received a budget for indirect costs from ERC (25%). Do you have access to the full 25% or does the university keeps these indirect costs fully? Can this indirect cost budget be used for costs that are considered as non-eligible by UvA?

The 25% of the grant (more than 600K) goes to the UvA entirely, to pay for the grant support! These are the rules, no deviation possible.


  1.
Overview of budget including current expenditure and forecast with already reserved with already reserved personnel costs (do you actually manage to spend the budget you have when the grant office keeps refusing? This should also be in line with the project timeline/personnel capacity planning. Once the project is completed, the budget is also supposed to be fully spent and reported accordingly.

This one I have successfully negotiated! With less frequency than I would like, but it comes now.






From: Core <core-bounces at lists.datagovlab.net> on behalf of Stefania Milan via Core <core at lists.datagovlab.net>
Date: Monday, 15 June 2026 at 13:27
To: Core Datagov <core at lists.datagovlab.net>
Subject: [DATAGOV Core] Feedback needed for meeting with grant office

Dear all
In acknowledgement of the busy week and weekend ahead, I suggest CANCELING our weekly check-in tomorrow.
PhD students in particular are encouraged to read out to me or to postdocs (or to each other) for pilot-specific questions and doubts.

However, tomorrow I will finally meet the grant team (remember I had asked for monthly meetings? This is the first and only meeting I managed to obtain to date…)
ACTION POINT: could you reply to this mail to suggest questions, pressing issues, doubts, requests, complains... whatever? I will use your input to prepare my list for tomorrow. THANKS!
~st.
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