Danish researchers benefit from MSCA awards

Universities in Denmark are celebrating success after 70 scientists received Individual Fellowship (IF) awards as part of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, funded under Horizon 2020.

The grants support the development of a researcher’s career, encouraging mobility and the internationalisation of research. Successful Danish applicants are now looking to receive either researchers from abroad or send their own scientists overseas.

Denmark submitted 284 applications as part of the MSCA call and the University of Copenhagen accounts for the majority of successful applications with 49 IF appropriations. The university’s Faculty of Life Sciences secured 26 of these.

Commenting, chief consultant Trine Buhl Monty at the faculty’s office of research and innovation, said: “We have made a very focused effort to attract more Marie Curie funding. We have, among other things, raised the awareness of the Marie Curie programme at all of our institutions and by intensifying co-operation with our academic environments. We conduct annual master classes, so that potential candidates from Germany and abroad can meet our research groups. Furthermore, we ensure close contact between candidate and supervisor, and we help the candidates to write the application. The value of these initiatives together are proven to provide better applications.”

The success rate for Danish applications of 24.6% is surpassed only by Estonia and Luxembourg. The UK secured the most awards with 475, followed by France with 144 and Spain with 128. The European Commission received a total of 7,409 IF applications, of which 1,421 applications were selected for funding. The average success rate was 16.8%.