Want to gain a Marie Curie Fellowship? Our 4-times winner shares his experience

EU

Three EC Marie Curie calls are currently open and having successful won a whopping fourMarie Curie fellowship awards, BU’s Professor Rudy Gozlan (ApSci) shares the secret to success:

 

I secured my first Marie Curie fellow in 2003 and since have repeated it four times with the latest fellow programmed to join Bournemouth University in September 2011 (Polish researcher). What I have noticed in the last few years is a sharp increase in the number of applicants as a result of the level of competition. It is not good enough to have a very good candidate and a very good proposal, you will need to reach excellence in both the candidate and the proposal as only scores above 91% have a real chance of being funded. Having said that, if you secure a fellowship you are guaranteed success during the two years of the fellowship as these candidates need little supervision (they are the elite of Europe after all) and they provide an extremely effective vector for mentoring among your PhD student community. In addition, once they return home they often secure top positions which will help you building an effective network of collaborators for further EU research proposals. So, if you are planning to secure a MCF where do you start?

First, you need to find a successful candidate. They are many ways you could do this, through international conferences when you spot a good talk from a junior researcher, you can approach them and discuss whether they have considered doing a post-doc. Also, you can contact your colleagues in other EU institutions and ask whether they have a good PhD student near completion and offer to develop a collaborative Marie Curie Fellowship (MCF) application, including your colleague in the steering group. Colleagues always like the opportunity to be involved in research excellence and know they would then have a good case for recruiting their student after a two year MCF. However, recruiting the student is only the first step of the process; you now need to develop an excellent proposal. An excellent proposal is not only an excellent scientific case; all categories such as “Impact”, “Training” etc are extremely important. Over the years we have established a template which we improve from year to year (I can provide some of the successful applications if needed). You cannot afford to rushed a single criteria of the application as this will make the difference between being funded (>91%) and failing.

Finally, these proposals are extremely time consuming so it is not something you decide at the last minute. I generally approach my potential students in December (although I generally have a pretty good idea of who I want) and start drafting the proposal in March. I personally never let the candidates develop their own proposal as I often have a better understanding of what could be funded and what could not. It has, for example, to be within your expertise but it also needs to complement the candidates own expertise while still not being too far away from his/her existing area of research. The proposal needs to appear to provide the candidate with a new set of skills that will become relevant when (s)he returns home and help him/her secure a position. As such the proposal needs to clearly demonstrate how this MCF will bridge this skill gap. It is also important to secure a good supervisory team which will provide a guarantee of research quality and give confidence to the reviewers that the student will be in a leading research environment.

Finally, even if you were unsuccessful you shouldn’t ditch your proposal but rather resubmit it the following year with either a new candidate if the candidate received a poor mark (you need to be ruthless) or keep the candidate and carefully address the reviewers’ comments.

Finally, I will bid for another MCF this year with a Portuguese student so if you would like further tips get in touch, otherwise I wish you good luck.

There are currently three MCF calls open – read about them here. If you would like to discuss a possible submission to any of these calls, please contact Corrina Dickson in the Research Development Unit.

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25 Responses to “Want to gain a Marie Curie Fellowship? Our 4-times winner shares his experience”

  1. Jessica Bell

    Hey,

    Great article. I am from Australia and I have found a supervisor/mentor in Germany. I have very little support from the uni in Germany. There are no seminars to help post-docs get funded.

    I have some help on the Australian side but these people haven’t worked with the Marie curie applications before. If possibe can you please send me a successful application. There are so many areas for ‘bullshitting’ away from the science I sometimes don’t know what they want. Its also hard not to repeat one’s self.

    Regards, Jess

  2. Michele

    Hi,
    Really nice and useful post. I’m doing the final corrections to my proposal (IEF, deadline in three days)and it would be great if you could send me one of your successful application. I am particularly in trouble with the session regarding training and impact: I wrote them at my best but without using all the pages available, and my PI think I should have the maximum page numbers. I wonder if leaving some blank pages might be a bad thing or not.
    Best regards,
    Michele

  3. Corrina

    Hi Michele, its great that you enjoyed reading the post and found it helpful. Unfortunately we can only support staff and students at our own institution and as a result can’t send you any successful applications. Best of luck with your submission, Corrina

    • Jayapal Mallareddy

      Hi,

      I currently hold a Marie Curie Fellowship, I would like to apply for another fellowship this year (H2020-MSCA-IF-2015), can I copy of some of sections (for ex. Independent thinking and leadership qualities and Potential for reaching a position of professional maturity and Potential to acquire new knowledge, some of them where its necessary, could it be a problem for new application. In addition, could you please provide a successful proposal of to have an idea of H2020-MSCA-IF-2014, to have an idea. thank you in advance for your support.

      Regards
      Jayapal

      • Pal

        Hi,

        I currently hold a Marie Curie Fellowship, I would like to apply for another fellowship this year (H2020-MSCA-IF-2015), can I copy of some of sections (for ex. Independent thinking and leadership qualities and Potential for reaching a position of professional maturity and Potential to acquire new knowledge, some of them where its necessary, could it be a problem for new application. In addition, could you please provide a successful proposal of to have an idea of H2020-MSCA-IF-2014, to have an idea. thank you in advance for your support.

        Regards
        Pal

  4. Daniele

    Hi and thank you for your interesting post.
    I am an Italian PhD and I am just drafting my MC-IEF proposal. I would really appreciate if you could e-mail me some sample applications (even the un-successful ones), with the evaluation given by the board. I think this would be greatly beneficial for my proposal writing!

    Thank you very much!
    Dani

  5. corrina dickson

    Hi Dani, its great that you enjoyed reading the post and found it helpful. Unfortunately we can only support staff and students working with our staff at our own institution in their Marie Curie endeavours. I therefore can’t send you any successful applications. Best of luck with your submission though, Corrina

  6. iker

    Hi,

    Thanks for all the useful information you provide. I have one question regarding to the IOF application. Two years ago, I applied for the MC IOF and I got 85 points out of 100. I mainly failed in the researcher section (as my CV was poor, only 2 papers published) and the implementation. The project was overall good. Now I have more than 15 papers published and the reviewer suggestions for the Implementation section. That should increase my chances.

    I wonder if it is possible to submit the same proposal or if it is going to be punished in some way (when submitting there is one section in the A form where they ask whether is the first time applying for the MC or not and in case that is not the first time, to fill the proposal number from the past).

    Thank you very much.

    Best Regards,

    • jsaver

      Hello iker,
      I’m a young italian medical doctor, I would like to apply to the MC IOF but I realized that writing such a kind of application form without having a example I can use to understand how to set all the thing is nearly impossible.

      So, would you be so kind to send me your old application form? I swear I’ll use it just to set my documentation… as you in the past, at the moment I have just 2 papers published, but the idea I’m going to present is really good and effective.

      thanks in advance for your courtesy,
      have a nice day!

      Giuseppe

  8. José A. Iglesias

    I would like to access to some examples of previously funded proposals in order to get a better idea about the writting style of this proposals. As you said in your post that you have a template that you improved from year to year, I think it can be a good inspiration for writting my first IEF proposal. Thanks.

  9. corrina dickson

    Thanks Jose and I am so pleased you enjoyed the article. As the Marie Curie scheme is intensley competetive I can only offer support and help and access to info to academics at our university. best wishes, corrina

  10. Leo

    Hi, Thank for nice posting.
    Can I ask you a favor?
    Please send me some examples of the part B5- Impact.
    I just want to see how to write a good one.

    Thanks again.

  11. Corrina Dickson

    Hi Leo, its great that you enjoyed reading the post and found it helpful. Unfortunately we can only support staff and students at our own institution and as a result can’t send you any successful applications. Best of luck with your submission, Corrina

  12. Dr. Sanjay Kumar

    Hi!
    Thank you for nice posting
    I am an applicants of Marie Curie IIF How much score is required to get funding for the proposal. I have written a proposal in the area of hydrogen storage.

  13. Rami

    I didnt know the idea was that the PI writes the proposal! thats seriously unfair. I believe there should be an interview included in this procedure!

  14. Angela Ferrante

    nice article. I’m trying to apply for the Marie Curie grants and I would appreciate very much to have a look to your template (no great assistance from my uni about that)

  15. Rudy

    Great article! I would be very greatful if you could provide me with some successful applications.

  16. Mike

    Good article. Interesting to hear about the application process from a Supervisor’s point of view. I’m on the other side, the researcher. I reached out to a lab whom I had read papers from for a number of years. I came up with about 70% of my proposal from my own experiences, conferences, and 30% Skype meetings with my future PI. I also collaborated with people/labs in my home state to learn more about the topic. After about 5 months of writing we submitted in 2013. I received a score of 91.3 but didn’t get funded. In 2014, I did something drastic to improve my score. I took out a student loan and visited my future lab. I rewrote and resubmitted the MSCA proposal from there. I also used part of my 2013 proposal to get a small grant through my PhD university to get preliminary data and more expertise to write my 2014 proposal. I got 92.8 my second round and am currently funded! Needless to say it was a lot of work.

  17. MEle

    Hallo, I find your article very interesting. As other people commenting this post asked, I would like to have a look to a successful application. Both me and the host institution are writing the first try with marie curie and therefore, i would really appreciate your help.

    Thank you in advance

  18. Tania

    Hello, as many many others I am trying to write my application and would appreciate if you could send me some of yours so I can check how it should be tuned

    thanks

  19. Victor

    Hello,

    First of all thank you for this article. It seems it is still quite useful after 4 years. I am in the process of submitting my first application. Would it be possible to have access to one or two of your previously successful applications?

    Kind regards,
    Victor

  20. Pallab Kumar Borah

    Thank you very much for this interesting piece. I would really appreciate if you could e-mail me (AT pallab_kumar_borah@hotmail.com) some sample applications, with the evaluation given by the board. I think this would be greatly beneficial for my proposal writing.
    Thank you in advance. Have a great day.

  21. Julen

    Hello,

    Thank you very much for this article. I would like to apply for a MC grant next year and I find your tips and description of the process really useful. It seems to me that coming up with a first draft without some kind of template is pretty hard. Are you still willing to provide some successful applications from the last years? I would be very grateful, as it would help me getting started.

    In any case, thanks a lot for sharing this post 🙂
    Julen

  22. Francesco Marangoni

    Hi there, thanks for the useful info. FYI, my IF-RI Marie Curie Fellowship just got bounced with a score of 91. Do you have any insight on how that could have happened (e.g. RI fellowships are harder than regular IF or so?). Thanks a lot for any help, it will be precious to get better the next time, and to cool off in the short period.