I arrived at HT last June 2023 just after defending my PhD thesis in Trinity College Dublin ...
Tips for winning a MSCA postdoctoral fellowship
The application process was intense and challenging. I arrived at Human Technopole last June 2023 just after defending my PhD thesis in Trinity College Dublin, and I needed a proposal ready for September. I faced the challenge of crafting my first proposal for a postdoctoral grant.
We had no previous successful applications in the research center and I did not personally know anyone that had won an MSCA (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions) postdoctoral fellowship. I started by asking previous winners for guidance based on their published abstracts from the EU portal (Tip #1). I was surprised by how many replies I got, and I was soon meeting with a dozen of them, some of which kindly shared their winning proposals with me. This was a tipping point as it helped me understand the importance of structure, content balance, and importance of interdisciplinarity for this type of grant (Tip #2). They also emphasised that a key aspect of the proposal is to show that you are exactly the right person for the specific project based on your expertise, institution/research group that you will be working on, and the training that you could access to advance your future career (Tip #3). At that point, I was ready to start writing this proposal. However, the situation suddenly changed.
I was forced to change my initial idea for the project after a couple months working on it. I realised that the environmental data I wanted to use was lacking a key temporal characteristic. Learning from this, I believe conducting preliminary analyses early on is fundamental to understand the feasibility of an idea (Tip #4), as well as, seeking input from others early in the process (Tip #5).
In the following days, I presented a new project idea to both my supervisor (Dr. Luisa Zuccolo) and the Health data Science centre’s project manager (Dr. Giulia Mangiameli), and we agreed that it was worth the try despite the time constrains. The second round of proposal writing was easier despite still being stressful and challenging. We worked together with Luisa complementing each other’s skills and disciplinary background to craft this interdisciplinary project that combines data science, environmental science, perinatal epidemiology, and public health. After feedback a feedback session with my collegues the proposal was ready for submission (Tip #6).
Bonus tips from Dr. Carlos Jiménez
Carlos Jiménez is a postdoctoral fellow in Magda Bienko’s lab at Human Technopole, who developing proteomic-based tools to study spatial otganization in the cell nucleus. Check his MSCA project called PRUNE!
Writing a MSCA postdoctoral fellowship is a challenging and exhausting task, but also a priceless training for any future grant application. Indeed, I think that applying for this kind of fellowships is the best way to start a postdoc position after your PhD, even if you do not succeed, because it makes you get in touch with knowledge and concepts that may be necessary in your new position, catch up with the state-of-the-art in your field, and, most importantly, conceptualize and design the objectives and methodology of your research project for the following years.
My advice is to focus on the soundness of your research project before anything else: be sure to have clear and consistent objectives, to understand them, and provide a detailed methodology that proves how feasible they are. If you can, look for advice from MSCA alumni you have contact with, and carefully read and follow the suggestions from the handbook provided by the MSCA-NET. Finally, and speaking from my experience, if you fail in your first attempt, and you have the chance to reapply the following year, do not give up, use all what you learnt and the feedback from the evaluators, and try again: the chances are much higher in a second round.
Article about MSCA postdoctoral applications
Baumert P, Cenni F, Antonkine ML (2022) Ten simple rules for a successful EU Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral (MSCA) fellowship application. PLoS Comput Biol 18(8): e1010371. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1010371
The application process was intense and challenging. I arrived at Human Technopole last June 2023 just after defending my PhD thesis in Trinity College Dublin, and I needed a proposal ready for September. I faced the challenge of crafting my first proposal for a postdoctoral grant.
We had no previous successful applications in the research center and I did not personally know anyone that had won an MSCA (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions) postdoctoral fellowship. I started by asking previous winners for guidance based on their published abstracts from the EU portal (Tip #1). I was surprised by how many replies I got, and I was soon meeting with a dozen of them, some of which kindly shared their winning proposals with me. This was a tipping point as it helped me understand the importance of structure, content balance, and importance of interdisciplinarity for this type of grant (Tip #2). They also emphasised that a key aspect of the proposal is to show that you are exactly the right person for the specific project based on your expertise, institution/research group that you will be working on, and the training that you could access to advance your future career (Tip #3). At that point, I was ready to start writing this proposal. However, the situation suddenly changed.