Horizon Europe’s Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) fund research and innovation projects with researchers from all over the world, with a focus on their training, skills and career development. They are a key source of European funding for researchers in Ireland across all disciplines. 

While the most popular MSCA programmes, in terms of numbers of applications, are MSCA Doctoral Networks and MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship, the focus of this update is on the MSCA COFUND and MSCA Staff Exchanges calls, which both open in October and offer valuable benefits and opportunities for researchers and organisations. 

MSCA COFUND provides co-financing for postdoctoral or doctoral programmes which have leveraged other regional, national or international funding.   

It is a mono-beneficiary call and any organisation in a Member State or Horizon Europe Associated country that can manage a doctoral or fellowships programme for researchers can apply. This includes universities and other higher education institutions, research centres, funding agencies, charitable bodies, enterprises, etc. The financial support offered by the action varies but is up to a maximum of €10 million per beneficiary.   

COFUND aims to foster excellence in researchers’ training, mobility and career development, spreading the best practices of Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions.   

The benefits to researchers include developing deeper and more diverse sets of research-related and transferable skills and competences; improved employability and career prospects both within academia and beyond; exposure to international, inter-sectoral and interdisciplinary experiences; enhanced networking and communication capacities; and avenues for increasing research impact.  

For organisations, the benefits are many including enhancing the quality and sustainability of their research training; increasing their global profile, visibility and reputation; strengthening their research and innovation capacity; and increasing their contribution to local, regional and/or national socio-economic ecosystems.  

Crucially COFUND allows organisations to leverage existing funds to maximise their impact. These funds can come from a variety of sources but must be unencumbered and cannot come from Horizon Europe funding.     

MSCA Staff Exchanges  

MSCA Staff Exchanges fund short-term international and inter-sectoral exchanges (secondments) of staff members (including PhDs and postdoctoral researchers) involved in research and innovation activities of participating organisations. These exchanges can be from one month to one year, with staff involved returning to their sending organisations after the secondment, to pass on their knowledge.  

The aim is to develop sustainable collaborative projects between different organisations from the academic and non-academic sectors based in Europe and beyond. Analysis of MSCA in H2020 has shown that Staff Exchanges (or RISE as they were known in H2020) was the most international MSCA action in Horizon 2020 in terms of participation from different countries. Staff Exchanges also attracted a high rate of non-academic participation, particularly among SMEs.  

For organisations, the call offers innovative ways to co-operate and transfer knowledge between sectors and disciplines; opportunities to strengthen and broaden international, inter-sectoral and interdisciplinary collaborative networks; as well as increasing research and innovation capacity. For participating staff, the call also offers an opportunity to extend their networks, increase their knowledge and skills sets, and avail of intersectoral and international experiences and expertise.  

Supports Available to Applicants  

The Irish Marie Skłodowska-Curie Office (IMSCO) encourages COFUND and Staff Exchanges applicants to avail of Enterprise Ireland Coordinator Support grants in plenty of time (at least 12 weeks before the call deadline) and also offers a range of supports to applicants including:  

• Query support and proposal advice  

• Information sessions and webinars  

• Handbook for applicants  

• A pre-review screening service – offering suggestions and comments on proposals to strengthen their chances of success. For higher education institutions, this service is coordinated through central Research Offices.    

The latest webinars, information sessions and handbooks are available on the IMSCO resources webpage.  

For potential applicants curious about applying, the IMSCO is available to meet virtually/in person to discuss the call further (please contact [email protected] to arrange an appointment).