The European Commission funds excellent postdoctoral scientists to do a 2 year research project in your Institution (company, research group, NGO or public administration) through the prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowships (MSCA PF, formerly MSCA Individual fellowships). Luxinnovation, the national Innovation Agency and your National Contact Point for European funding, assists you in finding the best applicants from around the world and helps the candidate in preparing the research proposal.
Target
Any legal entity from Luxembourg, public or private, willing to host a postdoctoral researcher (applicant) in Luxembourg for up to 2 years for a research and innovation project. Career development and training of the applicants are an integral part of the project and need to be considered. Non-academic organisations are not required to involve academic partners, but public-private partnerships can be foreseen in the form of exchanges of the applicant from one to the other. The proposal is written mostly by the applicant with guidance from you. You can propose your own applicants or we can help you find them among the best experts around the world. You can submit several independent proposals with different applicants in parallel.
Need some arguments about why to participate and what it entails? Please see our presentation here.
Why react ASAP
The next deadline for the final proposal submission is in September 2021, meaning that successful projects can start around May 2022. However, finding appropriate applicants (see below) takes a lot of time – so does training and proposal writing.
Quick facts about MSCA IF
- Duration: Up to 2 years Full Time Equivalent; an optional 6 month placement at a (separate) non-academic organisation towards the end of the project can be foreseen
- 100% funded: salary (up to 6’410€/m gross), research/training costs (1’000€/m) and overhead/management (650€) contribution by the EC to you – you are free to top-up of salary through other sources to attract the best talents. Additional funding possible for applicants with special needs.
- Proposal (10 page) is written mostly by applicant (postdoc) and fine-tuned by the host (you)
- Optional secondments (e.g. cross sectoral research exchanges of up to 8 months with another organisation (public or private)) inside Europe increase attractiveness of the proposal
- Success rates: 15% (EU average) and 28% in 2020 for proposals from Luxembourg (42% for proposals reviewed by our NCP)
- Applicant profile: PhD degree at the submission deadline (15.09.2021)
Our support
- Identification of talented applicants: You provide us a list of keywords describing the scientific skills you’re looking for and we will identify applicants from the world’s leading academic centers (determined mostly through citation records). If you already have your own applicant(s), even better – we’ll help them through the application procedure as well.
- You will receive the CVs of the potential applicants and select as many or as few as you like
- We offer (remote) training sessions and support material to the applicants and to you to help you with the proposal writing process