This year’s annual MSCA Doctoral Networks call has attracted considerable interest from the research community, with 1417 proposals submitted.
The fourth call of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions-funded Doctoral Networks scheme closed on 27 November 2024. The European Research Executive Agency received 1417 proposals.
By comparison, 1,066 proposals were submitted in 2023 and 136 were eventually selected for funding.
This year’s submitted proposals are distributed as follows.
- Standard Doctoral Networks: 1249 proposals
- Industrial Doctorates: 80 proposals
- Joint Doctorates: 88 proposals
Through this call, the European Union (EU) is expected to fund over 190 projects, with an indicative budget of €608.6 million.
The European Research Executive Agency (REA) received proposals from coordinators based in 34 countries.
Funding for excellent doctoral programmes
Through 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 but also NGOs, charities, hospitals, government departments and more. They will benefit from joint industry-academia supervision.
Joint Doctoral programmes will set up highly integrated doctoral programmes promoting joint selection, training and supervision, leading to joint or multiple doctoral degrees.
Indicative timeline
- December 2024 to end of February 2025: evaluation by the European Research Executive Agency (REA) and external independent expert evaluators
- April 2025: 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 2024
- end of July 2025: expected signature of the grant agreement with the European Commission for successful projects
- September 2025: first EU-funded projects start
Source: European Commission | Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions | What’s new (https://shorturl.at/SE3t2)