On Tuesday 11 June, the Korea-EU Research Centre (KERC) organized an online workshop on MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2024 in collaboration with European Commission DG EAC, Euraxess Korea, MSCAdvocacy and the National Research Foundation of Korea(NRF).
The workshop attracted great interest of Korean young researchers with more than 260 registrants confirmed. Most of them were PhD candidate or in their early postdoctoral career from universites such as Seoul National University(35), Sungkyunkwan University(20), Kyungpook University(14), Yonsei University(13), KAIST(12), Korea University(12), Pusan University(12) and so on.
The programme was composed of 3 main sessions and 1 special session. In the information session, DG EAC and Euraxess Korea introduced MSCA postdoctoral fellowships 2024 and explained how to apply. In the fellow session, two Korean MSCA PF fellows were invited to share their vivid experiences and useful tips for the application.
In the Pitch session, a novelty of 2024 workshop, three major European universities were presented, highlighting their support mechanism for MSCA PF applicants. It is following the survey held after the 2023 workshop indicating that one of the main barriers for Korean researchers on applying for the MSCA PF was their lack of awareness and connection with host institution in Europe. Indeed, most of participants said that they haven’t heard about universities that were presented at the workshop. As many of collaboration are initiated by alumni, “with Korea joining Horizon Europe pillar 2 as full partner, we need Korean colleagues at our institution or alumni in Korea” said Dr. Raoul Tan, Senior advisor at International affairs department at Erasmus MC.
In the survey launched after the workshop, 97% of the respondent said they would like to apply for MSCA PF in the future. Dr. Woohyun CHO, Director general at K-ERC said that “There are increasing interest of Korean researchers in Europe as Korea’s Horizon Europe association offers more opportunities for joint research and collaboration.” He added, “We hope that through this workshop, more Korean young researchers gain interest in research cooperation with Europe and participate in programmes such as MSCA PF, laying the foundtation for future cooperation.”
