MSCA awards €608.6 million for doctoral programmes
The European Commission will support 149 doctoral programmes to train and develop the skills of over 1800 doctoral candidates.
The European Commission has announced the results of the 2024 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Doctoral Networks call.
The Commission will fund a total of 149 excellent doctoral programmes with €608.6 million to train over 1800 doctoral candidates in and outside academia.
€536.9 million will be awarded to 133 standard Doctoral programmes, to train PhD candidates and develop their skills.
Funding includes also €26 million for 8 Industrial Doctoral programmes to train PhD candidates and develop their skills outside academia, including in industry and business. Doctoral candidates will also benefit from joint industry-academia supervision.
An additional €33 million will be allocated to 8 Joint Doctoral programmes, which promote joint selection, training and supervision leading to joint or multiple doctoral degrees.
The European Research Executive Agency (REA) received 1,417 applications for this call. This means a success rate of 10.6 %.
Close collaboration beyond academia
These doctoral programmes are implemented by international partnerships, involving 9335 organisations in 130 countries in the EU, Horizon Europe associated countries and beyond. 4725 of these are private for-profit entities.
Selected projects are coordinated by organisations in 18 countries.
This bar chart shows the countries of coordinating organisations and respective number of projects. The top 5 countries are Germany with 24 projects, Spain with 20, the Netherlands with 15, the United Kingdom with 13, Denmark and Italy with 12 each.
A list with all funded projects and coordinating organisations is available in CIRCABC. Please note that this list reflects the results of the evaluation before the Grant Agreement Preparation and formal selection decision.
Frontier research in all fields
Selected projects will promote research in fields such as
- advanced strategies towards energy-neutral wastewater treatment
- bringing rehabilitation robots to clinical practice or quantum-inspired
- climate-aware approaches to real estate value and valuation
Industrial Doctorates will train doctoral candidates in areas such as
- the use of artificial intelligence in Parkinson’s disease
- the development of autonomous robots that are able to comply with social conventions and expectations
- photocatalytic industrial applications
Joint Doctorates will develop programmes focusing for example on
- building capacity for healthy adaptation to pregnancy, postpartum and parenthood
- privacy for smart speech technology
- on how to deal with challenges related to migration
The projects selected are in the following broad fields.
This pie chart shows the projects by scientific disciplines. The top 3 disciplines are engineering and ICT with 37.6%, life sciences with 22.8% and social sciences and humanities with 12.1%.
An overview of the evaluation results, cut-off scores and statistics has been published on the MSCA Doctoral Networks 2024 call page.
Once the grant agreements are finalised, the complete list of funded projects will be published on the MSCA Doctoral Networks 2024 call 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 in their personal area 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 summer 2025. Projects on the reserve list may be contacted once all the grants have been signed.
Next funding round and information day
The next call for MSCA Doctoral Networks will open on 28 May 2025.
An information day will take place on 24 June 2025.
In the meantime, you may find more information on our how to apply page.
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.
More information
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