SMASH is a brand-new training and research programme to be co-funded by the Slovenian Ministry of Science, Education & Sport. The

Beneficiary, the University of Nova Gorica, is a research-focused university, situated at the Italian border, that boasts a 51:49 female:male ratio among its 200+ staff. The programme is designed to enhance the career prospects of outstanding post-docs from around the world, while strengthening Europe's human capital in R&I. Fifty talented individuals will be hired by five of Slovenias leading institutions, allowing them to expand their own research ideas based on access to the data-science potential of the Vega HPC supercomputer, the first such facility of the EUs €-multi-billion HPC initiative. With a diverse group of Associated Partners, including top SMEs from Slovenia and the EU as well as world-leading institutions like UC Berkeley, SMASH will form a close-knit community with a single unifying concept: the use of cutting-edge data science to answer some of the worlds most challenging questions. These include predictions related to the impacts of climate change, the development of personalised medicine, finding answers to fundamental questions about our Universe and digging deep into the fundamentals of language and how we communicate. SMASH will guarantee a recruitment process based on openness, transparency, impartiality and equality, and will ensure neutrality by giving all selection power to external experts, setting an example for the region. Top-level training in applications of machine learning, that is one of todays most transferable skills, will be complemented by rich soft-skill training opportunities, developed in collaboration with some of the worlds best experts, including CERN's Learning Hub. The impact of the programme will be felt for decades, both in the local research landscape and across Europe as the researchers take their skills to pursue their careers on the strength of their successes in SMASH