Six postdocs have been successful in the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowships 2024 (MSCA-PF) and the complementary ERA Fellowships 2024. Seven more will apply for support from the Czech MSCA-CZ call funded by the Jan Amos Komenský Operational Programme.
“The success rate of our MSCA-PF grant applicants over the duration of the Horizon Europe programme, i.e. from 2021 onwards, is between fourteen and forty-three percent. In last year's call we achieved a success rate of over 31%. Last year, a total of 19 young scientists applied for support from these programmes in connection with our university,” said Veronika Mikitová from the Grants Division of the Rector’s Office.
She stressed that even considering the alternative Czech call MSCA-CZ, the success rate of applications from MU is very high, even the highest in the Czech Republic in last year's call. Therefore, as many PhD students and their future supervisors as possible should consider taking advantage of this unique opportunity to participate in this year's European MSCA-PF call.
Success stories from the 2024 calls
Within the European Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowships (MSCA-PF) call, the support went to Pavla Fialová from RECETOX, who will spend two years at the University of Queensland in Australia, and Michal Racyn from the Faculty of Arts, who will spend two years at Columbia University. After two years, they will return to Masaryk University to complete their research under this support plan.
Supervised by Josef Šaur, Michal Racyn will focus on Eurasianism - an ideological and political movement that emerged in the environment of Russian interwar emigration and underwent a series of significant ideological transformations during the 20th century. “The main focus of the project will be a data analysis of archival materials related to the reception of Eurasianism in the environment of American Slavic Studies during the Cold War. In a broader context, the project aims to fill a crucial research gap in the study of Eurasian concepts and to contribute to a better understanding of the subject in the field of Slavic Studies and within contemporary Russian geopolitical discourse,” he describes.
Pavla Fialová will focus on environmental pollution. Her supervisor at MU Branislav Vrana is also the coordinator of the international monitoring network AQUA-GAPS/MONET, which monitors organic pollutants in the aquatic environment worldwide using passive sampling. “In my project, I will use unique samples from around the world collected within this network to track the global distribution of previously unknown hydrophobic pollutants in the aquatic environment using non-targeted analysis. Based on their abundance and risk assessment, the identified compounds will be prioritised, with those with the highest priority quantified and incorporated into regular monitoring,” Fialová explains, adding that her supervisor in Australia will be Sarit Kaserzon, who is the lead scientist of the AQUA-GAPS/MONET network and has expertise in analytical techniques and non-targeted analysis of environmental pollutants.
The other two projects from the MSCA-PF call are in the opposite direction, with two postdocs from abroad coming to Masaryk University for two years. Vladimír Sobota from the University of Bordeaux will be working on alcohol-induced arrhythmias in computational models of the heart at the Faculty of Medicine under the supervision of Markéta Bébarová. Alejandro Hernández Tanguma will be working in Robert Vácha's group at CEITEC, focusing on the mechanisms of interaction between membrane peptides and biomembranes.
The ERA Fellowship call, which extends support to MSCA-PF, will fund two additional projects. In this call, the highest ranked MSCA-PF proposals with a host institution from the so-called Widening Countries, for which there was not enough funding in the original call, are automatically supported.
Thanks to this programme, Professor Daniel Růžek's group at the Faculty of Science will welcome a new member. Alexandra Wilson will focus on tick-borne encephalitis. Syed Ahsan Ali Shah, focusing on the impact of climate change on education, will join Jan Činčera’s group at the Faculty of Social Studies.
The group of young scientists funded directly from the European Horizon Europe programme will be complemented by other people heading for postdoc positions who will receive support from the Czech MSCA-CZ call announced under the Jan Amos Komenský Operational Programme. It funds projects that have received at least 70 points in the main European call.
This year’s successful applicants include Kévin Bernal, who will now be in Pavel Babica's group at the RECETOX; Desai Bhargavi will join Amit Khairnar's team at the Faculty of Medicine and Gabrieal Gore-Gorszewska will join Anna Ševčíková's team at the Faculty of Social Studies. Other postdocs are heading to CEITEC MU. Two of them, Daniel Blasco and Anagha Sasikumar, are heading to Professor Radek Marek's group. Jan Přibyl's group will host Chiththaka Mudiyanselage and Michal Sýkora will join Petr Těšina's group.
Courses for applicants
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programmes are very beneficial for young scientists. From a financial point of view, the MSCA PF grants cover the competitive salary of a full-time postdoc for two years for scientists coming to MU from abroad or for three years in the case where an MU postdoc goes abroad for two years and then returns for a year as part of the mandatory return phase. The grant also covers the costs of carrying out the research project, including travel, publication fees and other project-related costs, as well as the institution's indirect costs.
“In order to increase the number of people interested in these calls, we organize seminars and workshops, both for postdocs - applicants for these grants, and for potential supervisors of these young scientists who would like to come to Masaryk University. MSCA PF applicants also have the opportunity to benefit from individual consultations with experienced project managers and MSCA interns currently working at our university,” added Mikitová.
“The seminar for potential supervisors was held in February, but if there is more interest from mentors, we will be happy to repeat it,” Mikitová added.