To answer these questions, the MCAA France Chapter, with the collaboration of Maison de l'Île-de-France of Paris, organized the conference “European Fellowships after PhD: MSCA and ERC opportunities.” It was an excellent opportunity to discuss two main types of European funds: the MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship (PF) and the ERC Starting Grant.

The conference took place on the 22nd of June, 2023 at the Maison de l'Île-de-France, Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris. This campus, in the south of Paris, hosts Erasmus students, PhD and postdoctoral fellows every year. It is a good environment for international students and researchers who want to move to Paris. In this atmosphere, the conference was followed by a networking aperture between the audience and the speakers. Five speakers were invited on the stage to share their experiences with these European fellowships.

Eugenia Shadlova is the MSCA National Contact Point for France. She and her team provide information, training, tools and support for proposal preparation and project implementation. She talked about the MSCA PF application and mobility rules, the deadline (13th September), and the budget dedicated from the European Commission for this scholarship. All researchers with a maximum experience of 8 years after the award of their PhD degree can apply for a European Postdoctoral Fellowship (across Europe), or a Global Postdoctoral Fellowship in a Third country. She encouraged anyone interested in MSCA postdoctoral fellowship to contact her team for help in the proposal application: “MSCA Postdoctoral fellowships were initiated to support researchers’ careers and foster excellence in research. It’s a great opportunity, don’t lose it!”

The second speaker was Jeronimo Rilla, an MSCA postdoctoral fellow in Paris, currently researching the ‘History of Ideas.’ Jeronimo is a historian of political thoughts. He obtained his PhD in 2018 at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, for the thesis "Leviathan as Prosopopoeia: Towards a New Theory of Conflict in Hobbes." His advice for new applicants: “Think like a sniper, not like Rambo. If you decide to apply, be prepared to only focus on the application.”

The third speaker was Lucile Alexandre, an MSCA Global Postdoctoral Fellow. Lucile won her grant for a biophysics project developed between Canada and France. Now she is based in Paris at the Pasteur Institute, working on the extraction and detection of extracellular vesicles. Her advice for new applicants: “MSCA PF was a great opportunity to work on my project, having my fund to support my research. It is a leverage for a conference and new ideas, but also an opportunity to learn how to organize a project.”

Maria Clotilde Camboni was an MSCA postdoctoral fellow at Oxford University in Social Science and Humanities. Her research interests include medieval Italian literature, the circulation of knowledge during the Middle Ages, and Renaissance intellectual history. From her experience, she said: “Choose your supervisor and host institution well, find out about them, talk to them before the application, and clarify with them how you will work together.”

The last speaker was an ERC fellow, Silvia Lasala. Silvia has been an associate professor at the University of Lorraine in France, since 2018. In 2016, she got her PhD at Politecnico di Milano in Energy Engineering. Afterward, she pursued her postdoctoral research in Nancy at the Laboratoire de Réactions et Génie de Procédés, with a contract funded by Air Liquide. Her research currently aims to improve the efficiency of technologies producing electricity, heating and cooling. From her experience, she said: “Individuate your weakness and try to work on it before the application.”

The conference was open to all the MCAA members, Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris (CIUP) residents, and all CIUP visitors. Given the extraordinary response of this edition, MCAA France Chapter would like to repeat the conference next year.

Giulia Rizzo,
Postdoctoral researcher at INSERM
Chair of MCAA France Chapter
france.chapter@mariecuriealumni.eu

Pradeep Eranti
MSCA ESR, Université Paris Cité
Twitter: @pradeeperanti