The European Commission will provide co-funding for 26 doctoral training and postdoctoral fellowship programmes.
The European Commission has announced the results of the 2021 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) call for Co-funding of regional, national and international programmes (COFUND).
The European Research Executive Agency (REA) received 116 applications for this call, the first under the Horizon Europe programme for research and innovation.
Funding for 26 projects
The European Commission will fund 26 COFUND projects with €89 million. These include 13 doctoral training programmes and 13 post-doctoral fellowship programmes of outstanding quality. These programmes will foster high-quality, sustainable training and carefully consider important aspects such as:
open science
community engagement
entrepreneurship
gender
ethics
high-quality supervision
The countries with most projects selected were Spain (7), Ireland (4) and Finland (3). Selected proposals include the participation of 495 different organisations from 42 countries, of which 93 small and medium enterprises.
Frontier research in all fields
Selected projects will promote research in all scientific fields, ranging from drug discovery or medical devices to quantum technologies, nanotechnology or plant science. While some of these are multidisciplinary research and training projects, others were developed fully with a bottom-up approach.
Many programmes will show the transition from basic research to industrial or clinical applications and will work on the solutions offered by physics, biology, data science or materials science to global challenges such as paediatric cancer, clean energy and water or sustainable development.
Once the grant agreements are finalised, the complete list of funded projects will be published on CORDIS.
Support for more than 700 researchers
These programmes will foster the high-quality training, supervision and career development of more than 700 excellent scientists at doctoral and postdoctoral level carrying out their research in a wide range of disciplines.
Selected projects will promote international, interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral collaboration to
train researchers and innovators in academia and beyond
allow them to enlarge their networks and share knowledge to carry out cutting-edge research
provide them with new knowledge, skills and career development perspectives
boost their creativity and entrepreneurship
These programmes will also allow organisations to attract international talent and increase their research and innovation capacities.
Spreading MSCA best practice
The COFUND action provides funding for regional, national and international programmes for training and career development (doctorates and post-doctorate fellowships), through co-funding mechanisms. COFUND spreads the MSCA’s best practices by promoting high standards and excellent working conditions. It promotes sustainable training and international, interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral mobility.
Between 2014 and 2020 the MSCA funded 217 COFUND projects.
Next steps for successful applicants
The European Research Executive Agency sent out letters on the results of the evaluation to inform applicants of the outcome of the selection.
Applicants should be able to access the results of the evaluation on their personal space of the Funding and Tenders Opportunities Portal.
The letter sent out to the successful applicants contains all the instructions about the next steps to prepare the grant agreement with the agency.
Projects in the reserve list may be contacted until all grants for the call have been signed.
Next funding round is coming soon.
The next call for MSCA COFUND will open on 11 October 2022.