A project is a unique and temporary endeavour aimed at achieving specific objectives, with an appropriate quality level, within time and cost constraints. As it complies with this definition, most of the research work takes the form of projects. Nowadays, doing scientific research implies a high level of expenditure, therefore participating in both national and international projects is a necessity, so as to be able to secure funding, in the framework of a very competitive environment. Funding agencies are increasingly concerned about the use of their funds, and so project management is rapidly becoming a requirement for the granting and successful completion of projects. Indeed, projects are now larger, more complex, and involve in most cases cooperation among different researchers, often scattered geographically.

Project management is a well-known and internationally recognized discipline, which aims at ensuring that trade-offs among variables of any project (scope, quality, time, cost) are solved optimally at any point during the project lifetime so as to fulfil the needs and expectations of the project stakeholders. Project management is widely implemented in certain industrial sectors worldwide. However, project management is rarely applied systematically to academic research, even in the case of public-private partnerships. The tradition is that the researcher, as Principal Investigator, takes on the leadership and coordination of resources on his/her own, in the assumption that this will be sufficient to steer the project adequately. Unfortunately, this is often not the case, and most projects fall short behind the expectations set. Specific knowledge about how to appropriately design and manage projects is needed, as scientific and technical excellence does not imply per se any expertise on project management. On the contrary, some of the key aspects of project management (such as legal and financial issues) are simply too far away from many “traditional” scientific fields, and are therefore prone to create inefficiency during project development.

This course aims at providing researchers with some basic knowledge about project management, with specific emphasis on proper design and implementation of research projects. Additionally, due attention is given to aspects related to the use of research results after the project is finished, as a key topic for ensuring long-term financing and expansion of the researchers’ career.