The MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship scheme opens on 8 May 2025.

Information is available for prospective applicants who wish to apply with the University of Bath as the host institution.

Guidance for potential host supervisors

If you are intending to recruit prospective applicants for a MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship, or if you have been approached by an interested applicant or applicants about pursuing a project through this scheme, Research and Innovation Services can provide you, and the applicant(s) with some additional support.

If you have been approached by a prospective applicant and are willing to host their potential fellowship at Bath, you are strongly advised to notify your Head of Department about this and ensure that you have departmental support and provisions in place to take on a new postdoctoral fellow.

Recruitment

What you need to do

• As potential hosts, you will be responsible for placing hosting offers on EURAXXES, and any other relevant recruitment sites.
• If you intend to run an informal interview process to select candidates that you are willing to support through the application process, please
• Liaise with your Head of Department for guidance on best practice.
• Review the Recruitment and Selection training and code of practice for guidance on fair recruitment.

(Note that candidate pre-selection interviews are not an obligatory step for recruiting MSCA PF candidates).

Additional RIS support

The Research Development Manager for Horizon Europe can supply some standard editable text about the MSCA scheme, the University, and its commitment to EDI principals for you to include in your hosting offer. Please email the Research Development mailbox to request this.

Proposal development

What you need to do

As a potential host supervisor, you are responsible for supporting your applicant(s) with their proposal development. You must:

• Create a PAM record and register the proposal on Ethics@Bath: Your applicant will not be able to access PAM as they will not have a University account. As potential supervisor, you will need to do this on your applicant’s/applicants’ behalf. For this funding opportunity only, the Pre-Award team will populate the costing once the supervisor has created a PAM record.
• Please complete the intention to submit form, indicating the name of the applicant, the host supervisor alongside all other requested information.

Please ensure that you have approval from your Head of Department that they are happy to host the Fellowship before you begin detailed proposal development with the applicant.

Further support

• Providing in-depth applicant support and technical feedback on proposals: You, or your department, will be responsible for providing in-depth technical advice and guidance to applicants to help them develop their prospective projects.
• Coordinating internal peer review at Bath: As the MSCA scheme is very competitive, you may also wish to have proposals peer reviewed by colleagues at Bath. The applicant may also seek feedback from their own network. They will need to coordinate this themselves.

Additional RIS Support

The Research Development Manager for Horizon Europe can provide a single round of additional lay feedback on MSCA PF proposals. This is intended to provide an extra layer of advice for the applicant, ensuring adherence of their proposals to scheme guidance, and suggesting possible improvements in line with MSCA recommendations.

Applicants should contact Ceri-Wyn Thomas directly for proposal feedback.

The Research Development and Pre-Award Teams can also provide any assistance to applicants as needed for queries about eligibility, the application form, or the application process.

Applicants are welcome to contact us:

Key contacts

• Pre-Award: Every Department has their own Pre-Award contact
• Proposal development: Dr Ceri-Wyn Thomas (Research Development Manager for Horizon Europe)

Submission

What you need to do

• As supervisor, you must ensure that a PAM record and Ethics at Bath registration have been completed at least four weeks in advance of the final call deadline.
• Once Pre-Award has populated the costing, you must submit the costing for Head of Department approval.
• The applicant will be responsible for submitting their own proposal via the Funding & Tender’s portal.

Award

If one or more of your applicants are successful, please get in touch with your Pre-Award contact for any queries about the set-up of the award.

Potential supervisors should be aware of the MSCA Guidelines for Supervision. Supervisors of successful applicants must read this guidance and retain it for reference throughout the duration of the supervision.