This year’s annual MSCA Doctoral Networks call has attracted considerable interest from the research community, with 946 proposals submitted.
The second call of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions-funded Doctoral Networks scheme closed on 15 November 2022. The European Research Executive Agency received 946 proposals. By comparison, 1 076 proposals were submitted in 2021 and 152 were eventually selected for funding.
This year’s submitted proposals are distributed as follows
- Standard Doctoral Networks: 793 proposals
- Industrial Doctorates: 76 proposals
- Joint Doctorates: 77 proposals
Through this call, the European Union (EU) is expected to fund over 150 projects, with an indicative budget of €428.27 million.
Funding for excellent doctoral programmes
By way of this call, the EU will fund doctoral programmes with the prospect of
- training highly skilled doctoral candidates in and outside academia
- stimulating their creativity
- enhancing their innovation capacities
- boosting their employability in the long-term
These doctoral programmes are implemented by international partnerships formed by organisations (from universities and research centres to the private sector and small and medium-sized enterprises) in the EU and countries associated to Horizon Europe and beyond.
Industrial Doctoral programmes will train PhD candidates to develop their skills in organisations outside academia, including in industry, businesses and small and medium-sized enterprises. They will benefit from joint industry-academia supervision.
Joint Doctoral programmes will set up doctoral programmes promoting joint selection, training and supervision, leading to joint or multiple doctoral degrees.
Indicative timeline
- November 2022 to mid-April 2023: Evaluation by the European Research Executive Agency and external independent expert evaluators
- Mid-April 2023: Notification of call results to applicants
- Applicants will be able to access the results of the evaluation on their personal space of the Funding and Tenders Opportunities Portal
- An overview of the evaluation results, cut-off scores and statistics will be published on the page of the call Doctoral Networks 2022
- End of June-July 2023: Expected signature of the grant agreement with the European Commission for successful projects
- Summer 2023: First EU-funded projects start. Projects can start at the latest up to 2 years after the call deadline (i.e. November 2024)
Source: European Commission I Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (https://bit.ly/3UXstqr)