The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) are the European Union’s flagship funding programme for doctoral education and postdoctoral training of researchers.
The recent Horizon Europe mid-term evaluation shows that MSCA boost research careers and EU competitiveness by supporting research excellence, talent mobility and institutional capacity.
Around 65,000 researchers are expected to benefit from MSCA under Horizon Europe, including 25 000 PhD candidates. Over 8,300 researchers have already been recruited to date. The vast majority of these researcher agrees that the MSCA has helped them to further their career.
One of these researchers benefitting from MSCA is Dr Fatemeh Mokhtari, MSCA Fellow of the Month for June. Dr Mokhtari moved from Australia to Belgium for her postdoctoral fellowship where she works smart drug delivery systems for cancer treatment by developing innovative materials for targeted therapy.
The European Commission works with stakeholders to improve and evaluate the MSCA for everyone involved . The recent publication of the COFUND Policy Report 2025 shows the outcomes of this work with practical and policy recommendations.