ForBio: MSCA-PF Training Program 2024
ForBio will organize its seventh training program for incoming and outgoing fellows applying for postdoctoral fellowships from the Horizon Europe Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions (MSCA) Postdoctoral Fellows. The program runs from now to the submission deadline of the Horizon Europe MSCA-PF call on September 11th 2024. The 2024 program will be offered as an online course with proposal writing support, virtual teaching material, peer review by academic peers and MSCA-PF consultant Alie Kwint, and liaison with EU coordination offices. We also aim to give strong applicants from the 2023 program a chance to improve and resubmit their proposals, and importantly to attract new incoming and outgoing fellows.
Each project concept will be assessed by two internal reviewers, and only those passing the assessment will be admitted into the program. This will reduce the number of admitted trainees, but will enable us to invest more time into the strongest projects.
Goal of the MSCA-PF program
Enhance the creative and innovative potential of experienced researchers in biosystematics, in a broad sense, wishing to diversify their individual competence in terms of skill acquisition through advanced training, international and intersectoral mobility.
Instructors
Alie Kwint - Kwintessence
Meghan Balk - Natural History Museum, UiO
Micah Dunthorn - Natural History Museum, UiO & ForBio
Target group
Participants in the course must be Postdoctoral fellows at the date of the call deadline (11th Sept 2024) with a maximum of 8 years full time equivalent experience in research, measured from the date of award of the doctoral degree.
Deadlines
May 21 - June 7. Registration in the program (fellows apply with host) and submit a project concept (you will find the template in the registration link below). For the concept focus only on the excellence section and outline the big picture of the impact and implementation sections. Early registrations are encouraged, the internal assessment will be provided within five days after the registration. After passing the internal assessment, each fellow will receive a package of supporting materials and examples of previously funded proposals.
June 17 & 18. Afternoon halfday sessions (13:00-16:30). Online workshop on the call, application process, going through each section, exercises to define gaps, questions, milestones and deliverables, what is excellence, how to implement the project, how to achieve impact?
June 19. Selection of candidates for external reviewers for proposal evaluation. Before the start of the course, participants are encouraged to select researchers in their field who they consider to be good candidates for evaluation of their projects. A list of 4 to 6 candidates per participant should be agreed upon.
July 17 - Aug 17. Feedback form scientific review
July 22 - Aug 23. Submission of the revised proposal draft for EU consultant review by Alie Kwint, Kwintessence. You will need to reserve a specific time for submission for review. The consultant aims to provide feedback within 2 days.
Sept 11. Submission deadline of MSCA-PF proposals
Please consider the following about MSCA-PF fellowships
- Two (or three for Global Fellowship) year competitive postdoctoral research fellowships
- Specific mobility requirements
- Think about the goal above when picking a host and project
- Hosts for incoming fellows include research organizations from the private and public sector, including universities, private industry, consultancy companies, and government sector hosts.
- Projects can also include secondments to the private and public sector, including those listed above and other universities.
- Some potential hosts for incoming fellows are listed on the course homepage.
- Outgoing fellows need to identify their foreign host or shortlist potential hosts.
Registration
Fellows should register here by June 14th [Extended]. You will be asked to fill out a project proposal concept as part of the registration. The template is provided on the registration page.
Click here for a list of potential hosts in the ForBio network.
Contact
Meghan Balk or Micah Dunthorn for more information.