Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Part of the “Excellent Science” pillar of the Horizon Europe 2021-2027 program, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions promote career development for researchers and faculty, equipping them with new skills by encouraging mobility across borders and exposure to different sectors and disciplines.

AgroParisTech faculty can receive funding for travel and stays abroad as part of the projects conducted within the context of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions program.

In particular, the Staff Exchange action encourages intersectoral, international, and interdisciplinary exchanges of staff involved in research projects.

During the course of the Horizon 2020 program, AgroParisTech took part in 4 staff exchange projects that involved different regions of the world and covered a wide variety of subject areas:

• PREMIUM (Preservation of Microorganisms by Understanding the Protective Mechanisms of Oligosaccharides)

Feedback on these exchanges was provided by the research staff from AgroParisTech involved in the PREMIUM project, which brought together researchers from Europe and Argentina.

• ManaGlobal (Globalized Governance Norms and Local Management and Business Practices in Africa and on the Arab Peninsula)
• Highlands (Collective Approach of Research and Innovation for Sustainable Development in Highlands)
• ATTER (Agroecological Transitions for Territorial Food Systems).
• Three faculty members from AgroParisTech were also able to take advantage of individual research fellowships under the COFUND action program through the Agreenskills mobility program (2012-2016, then 2014-2019) coordinated by INRAE and Agreenium.
• Bruno Lemaire for the “Measurement of Nutrient Transport Across the Sediment-Water Interface” project at the University of Koblenz-Landau’s Institute for Environmental Sciences.
• Pierre Barbillon for the “Computer Model Uncertainty Quantification” project at the Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute (SAMSI) in the United States.
• Julien Wolfersberger for the “Ties Between Structural Transformation, the Environment, and Institutions in Developing Countries” at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.

These international research fellowships, which lasted between eight months and one year, enabled them to pursue their research and enhance their skills. As Bruno Lemaire put it, “This travel grant allowed me to expand my understanding of physical limnology (turbulence, waves, energy flow) and environmental measurement techniques and enhance my programming and data-analysis skills. It also enabled me to experience a slightly different approach to research.”

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions also offered specifically targeted support to enable young researchers to travel. They strongly encourage doctoral and postdoctoral mobility through two specific initiatives :

• The Doctoral Networks action, a program created to establish innovative joint doctoral programs spanning multiple European higher education institutions. In the case of “Joint Doctorate” type projects, this includes jointly supervised Ph.D. theses.

​​​​​​​During the Horizon Europe program, the ABIES Doctoral School and faculty from AgroParisTech took part in 4 doctoral networks in varying ways:

• E-MUSE (Complex Biological Systems Multiscale Modeling: Interactive Mechanistic and Data-driven Approaches)

• FertiCycle (New Bio-based Fertilizers from Organic Waste Upcycling)
• InsectDoctors (A Joint Doctoral Program to Educate Tomorrow’s Insect Pathologists: Solving Disease Problems in the Upcoming Insect Rearing Industry) 
• FoodEngine (Enginomics in Food Quality Design: The Case of Shelf-stable Fruit-, Vegetable-, and Legume-based Foods)
• The Postdoctoral Fellowships action, which offered funding for travel in Europe and elsewhere in the world (followed by an additional return phase) for young researchers (“postdoctoral” here meaning up to 8 years after obtaining a Ph.D.).  ​​​​​​​

This action offered funding both to conduct research abroad for up to two years and to host world-class international postdoctoral researchers within the research teams at AgroParisTech. 

AgroParisTech’s European Affairs Unit offers support to senior researchers interested in including Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions in their research activities. 

You can view the database of AgroParisTech research and innovation projects to learn more about the projects mentioned above that have received funding.