Evaluation procedure
Eligibility
Participation is open to any individual affiliated with a recognised legal entity anywhere in the world (see Section 4.1 of the COST annotated rules).
While participation is globally open, eligibility for financial support (i.e. reimbursement of travel and daily allowance) depends on the country of the participant’s affiliation, as defined in section 6.4. Participants should verify their specific reimbursement status based on their institution’s location (countries membership status here), and the COST annotated rules (consulted March 2026).
There are no specific requirements regarding education, age, or background. However, candidates should demonstrate sufficient proficiency in entomology or related disciplines, and/or in data science, computer science, or related fields, in order to benefit from the course. Applicants should also explain how participation in the course could positively influence their career development.
Students who have previously attended ACCESS are not eligible to apply, while applicants who were unsuccessful in previous years are welcome to apply again.
Please note that joint applications are not permitted. Applicants should not attempt to coordinate their submissions with other candidates.
How to apply
In the application form you will be asked to provide some personal details, upload your CV, and write two short paragraphs of up to 1500 characters each, including spaces.
Your CV should be at most 2 pages long, in PDF format, and clearly state your education and current affiliation(s); pages exceeding the 2-page limit will be discarded during evaluation.
The first paragraph should describe your background, your interest in the topic, and what you hope to gain from the course. This helps us assess your motivation to attend the summer school and its potential impact on your career.
The second paragraph should describe one or more specific research project(s), question(s) or problem(s) you are excited to tackle in invertebrate evolution, ecology, behaviour, conservation, distribution, or related fields. This allows us to evaluate your creativity and your ability to identify meaningful gaps / opportunities in the field. You will not necessarily work on the problem(s) you describe here; this paragraph helps us gauge your current understanding and research interests.
Because the course is project-based, the proposed research idea(s) are an important part of the application. Your project could involve monitoring insect behaviour in the field or laboratory, detecting or quantifying traits in specimens, building new hardware or mobile applications, automating existing research tasks, or generating new types of biological data. We are interested in a broad range of ideas related to computational entomology and will also consider projects involving other terrestrial or freshwater invertebrates.
You will also be asked whether you would you consider self-financing your participation if you are not selected for a funded slot. This information remains hidden to reviewers during shortlisting, to ensure impartiality. It does not affect your chance of a funded slot.
Applications will be reviewed by the organisers with the help of a select group of core members from InsectAI. All submitted information is treated confidentially, and applicants may request deletion of their data after the notice period has ended (see “Selection outcome”).
Each application will be reviewed by two evaluators whenever possible, while avoiding conflicts of interest (for example supervisor–student or teacher–student relationships).
Evaluation stages
Shortlisting
The first stage of the evaluation is based only on the two paragraphs submitted in the application form. These two components have equal weighting and are used to assess:
- motivation and relevance of the course to the applicant’s career
- originality and feasibility of the proposed research question
Based on this first evaluation, we will pre-select a number of candidates corresponding to approximately 1.5 times the number of available places.
Evaluators will then discuss the shortlisted candidates collectively and attempt to group applicants into thematic clusters that could form productive project teams.
Final evaluation
During the final stage we will also examine the submitted CVs to support the final decision. Complementarity between candidates, including differences in expertise, background, and skills, is also considered.
Selection outcome
Once teams have been formed, selected candidates will be contacted to confirm their acceptance. This is expected to occur around the beginning of June 2026. Selected candidates will have 15 days to confirm their participation; otherwise the place will be offered to the next candidate on the list.
There may be more selected candidates than available funding. In this case, applicants who have indicated that they can self-finance will be invited to confirm their participation and asked whether they could attend the course using their own funding (for example scholarships, institutional support, or scientific society grants). Invitations to participate with personal funding depend first on evaluation score and second on the availability of funds.
When all places have been filled, the results will be communicated to all remaining applicants, at the latest by the end of June 2026.
In previous editions the course has received a large number of applications, so please keep in mind that participation is competitive. Due to the large number of applications, we regret that we cannot provide individual feedback to unsuccessful applicants.