MSCA awards €405 million for doctoral programmes

The European Commission has announced the results of the 2021 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) call for Doctoral Networks.

The European Research Executive Agency (REA) received 1076 applications for this call, the first under the Horizon Europe programme for research and innovation.

Funding for excellent doctoral programmes

The European Commission will fund a total of 144 doctoral programmes with €405 million with the prospect of training over 1500 doctoral candidates in and outside academia.

€53 million will be awarded to 18 Industrial Doctoral programmes to train PhD candidates and develop their skills outside academia, including industry and business. Doctoral candidates will also benefit from joint industry-academia supervision.

€36 million will be dedicated to 10 Joint Doctoral programmes, which promote joint selection, training and supervision leading to joint or multiple doctoral degrees.

Close collaborations beyond academia

These doctoral programmes are implemented by international partnerships, covering nearly 1160 organisations based in 38 countries in the EU, countries associated to Horizon Europe and beyond, including 232 from the private sector, 120 of which are Small and Medium Enterprises.

Frontier research in all fields

Selected projects will promote research in fields such as novel cancer diagnostics and treatments, renewable energies and climate resilience.

Industrial Doctorates will train doctoral candidates in areas such as development of fast-charging stations for electric mobility, artificial intelligence for microelectronics or 6G technologies.

Joint Doctorates will investigate the treatment of Alzheimer’s and glaucoma among other topics.

The projects selected are in the broad fields of

• engineering and ICT: 33%
• life sciences: 24%
• chemistry: 13%
• environment and geosciences: 10%
• social sciences and humanities: 10%
• physics: 8%
• economics: 1%
• mathematics: 1%

An overview of the evaluation results, cut-off scores and statistics has been published on the page of the call MSCA Doctoral Networks 2021. Once the grant agreements are finalised, the complete list of funded projects will be published on the same page and on CORDIS.

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. The first projects will start at the earliest in August 2022.

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 Doctoral Networks will open on 12 May 2022. You will find more information on the MSCA website on how to apply.

About the MSCA Doctoral Networks Programme

MSCA Doctoral Networks implement doctoral programmes by partnerships of organisations from different sectors across Europe and beyond. They train highly skilled doctoral candidates, stimulate their creativity, enhance their innovation capacities and boost their employability in the long-term. Since 2014 the MSCA have funded 1080 doctoral programmes.