Abstract

MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships is an attractive and competitive scheme under Pillar 1 in Horizon Europe which supports the creative and innovative potential of postdoctoral researchers wishing to acquire new skills through advanced training, international, interdisciplinary and intersectoral mobility.

Since 2021, the Research Development Team (RTD) in the ADAPT Centre has been running a managed MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship process to recruit and train applicants, with a view to increasing application numbers and influencing the success rate of proposals. While an informal reflection of the process was carried out post-submission during the first 2 years, in 2023, we sought to more formally evaluate the managed process from start to finish.

The objective of our internal evaluation was to:
Assess effectiveness of the process
Identify its strengths and weaknesses
Assess whether the time invested by the RDT was generating a worthwhile outcome

This consisted of surveying applicants after each training session, internal retrospectives with the RDT following the submission and the release of results and tracking correlations between the competitiveness of proposals and time invested by the RDT team.

Another dimension of our evaluation sought to track the effects of the multi-layer review on a proposal i.e reviews from NCPs, local research office, supervisor and RDT.

The poster presentation will include the RDTs takeaway and learning outcomes from the process as well as plans for improvements for 2024.