Enterprise Ireland’s MSCA CO-FUNDs contribute to European Year of Skills
2023 is the European Year of Skills and the EU is highlighting ongoing initiatives that help companies, in particular SMEs, to address skills shortages in the EU and contribute to the green and digital transitions, supporting innovation and competitiveness.
With its Career-FIT and Career-FIT PLUS programmes, Enterprise Ireland has been playing a significant part in advancing this agenda. Thanks to these two programmes, co-funded by the EU under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Horizon 2020 budget, we have since 2018 attracted nearly 100 experienced researchers (Postdocs or similar) worldwide to work with Irish-based companies of all sectors and sizes on industry-focused collaborative research projects.
The selected researchers were awarded a three-year fellowship following four rounds of competitive calls and international, two-step process expert evaluations. Their skillsets range from Artificial Intelligence to new materials, and from food technology to robotics. They belong to 30 different nationalities and have in common the interest to work on applied research and get first-hand experience with industry, where they spend up to one year in secondment.
The secret sauce of Enterprise Ireland’s Career-FIT programmes is the fact that the participating companies have been there from the beginning of the project proposal design and therefore, have their R&D strategy embedded into it. Forty-four different companies participate from all over the Republic: 19 SMEs, 12 MNCs, nine large domestic companies, and four High Potential Start-Ups (HPSUs). In many cases, the funded projects and the high-calibre of researchers involved have given the participating companies the extra drive to spend more time on cutting-edge R&D projects and take a few steps ahead in innovation.
Each Career-FIT researcher also avails of a generous training budget to upskill themselves as well as two mentors (one academic and one from industry) and the structure of a Technology Centre or Gateway to support their research career.
Pictured:
Dr Kata Trifkovic from Serbia (on the right) at her partner company Glanbia Ingredients’ (now Tirlán) in Ballyraggett, Co Kilkenny in 2019.
Of the 50 researchers who have completed their Career-FIT journey, 21 have secured an academic position in Ireland and nine have pivoted to a career in industry (five in Ireland and four abroad). Amongst those who have remained in Ireland, five are in the process of commercialising their research and one is about to launch his own spin-out company. Such preliminary data show how transformational our Career-FIT programmes can be for all parties involved.
More information about the projects that have been funded can be found under the “case studies” tabs in Career-Fit and Career-Fit-Plus.