2019 Marie Curie Individual Fellowship (H2020-MSCA-IF-2019)

[SimpaLif]

The experience of the supervisor is important. I have applied 2 times with different supervisors, each time the reviewers highlighted the experience of the supervisor in supervising students or post-docs and their publications.
I know that it is also the case for friends that applied (and got it).

Thank you! Do you think that the differences between important supervisors and less recognized supervisors are considered in the fellowship evaluation?

I don't think so. If your supervisor is an expert and published papers in the field and has supervised PhD and postdocs is fine. In my experience if the supervisor had or has access to EU funds (msca itn, if, rise or erc) than is a big plus.

To be honest, all is important including supervisor's expertise.

But...they simple go through application and search for weak points to describe them in ESR. Some comments were really silly. I planned some collaboration with clinics, and they asked me for the role of doctors in my research. It is more than obvious that their role is to recruit patients and to provide some expertise in diagnosis while i am developing diagnostic tool. I clearly emphasized this on many places in proposal.
Another was ... "approaches for transferring candidate'e knowledge to the host are not clearly described". We all know that we will help in courses, lab work, organizing workshops, etc. I also may say that some of these were in proposal.

[MSCA_CHEM_2019]

Ok. Then, the luck is a key factor.

[MSCA_SOC_2019]

For very good proposals it is THE key factor indeed!

Ok. Then, the luck is a key factor.

[Kranthi Maniam]

From the previous years , any idea on how many first timers have received the grant ?

[megasphaera]

Thank you! Do you think that the differences between important supervisors and less recognized supervisors are considered in the fellowship evaluation?

I don't think so. If your supervisor is an expert and published papers in the field and has supervised PhD and postdocs is fine. In my experience if the supervisor had or has access to EU funds (msca itn, if, rise or erc) than is a big plus.

To be honest, all is important including supervisor's expertise.

But...they simple go through application and search for weak points to describe them in ESR. Some comments were really silly. I planned some collaboration with clinics, and they asked me for the role of doctors in my research. It is more than obvious that their role is to recruit patients and to provide some expertise in diagnosis while i am developing diagnostic tool. I clearly emphasized this on many places in proposal.
Another was ... "approaches for transferring candidate'e knowledge to the host are not clearly described". We all know that we will help in courses, lab work, organizing workshops, etc. I also may say that some of these were in proposal.

Unfortunately you have to specify that, even if you think is implicit. Also it has to been in the right position and highlighted. For example last year the reviewers said that I had not planned grant writing workshop and in more than one occasion they said that It was not clear the role of the host in training me in certain aspects.

Well it turn out that I have specified that I was going to attend a grant writing workshop (I wrote down even the name of the workshop) as I talked about these things with the host. I also specified how the host was going to help me gaining the things the reviewers pointed out. I was so careful in that, I even specified the name of the staff in the host institution that was going to help me. Maybe it was not clear, maybe they did not read carefully, maybe the project was so shit they just wanted to reject it no matter what.

Also I had the chance to look at winning proposal. I saw they were very general about dissemination of results. Well, to made my proposal better I contacted with an open science organization and they helped me with the dissemination part with lots of suggestions. That part was super specific and had very cool stuff in it (especially oriented at open access science). I only got a 4.10 in that section while other proposal that were super generic got 4.80 or even 5.
So yes: it is luck as I see it.

[MSCA_CHEM_2019]

I don't think so. If your supervisor is an expert and published papers in the field and has supervised PhD and postdocs is fine. In my experience if the supervisor had or has access to EU funds (msca itn, if, rise or erc) than is a big plus.

To be honest, all is important including supervisor's expertise.

But...they simple go through application and search for weak points to describe them in ESR. Some comments were really silly. I planned some collaboration with clinics, and they asked me for the role of doctors in my research. It is more than obvious that their role is to recruit patients and to provide some expertise in diagnosis while i am developing diagnostic tool. I clearly emphasized this on many places in proposal.
Another was ... "approaches for transferring candidate'e knowledge to the host are not clearly described". We all know that we will help in courses, lab work, organizing workshops, etc. I also may say that some of these were in proposal.

Unfortunately you have to specify that, even if you think is implicit. Also it has to been in the right position and highlighted. For example last year the reviewers said that I had not planned grant writing workshop and in more than one occasion they said that It was not clear the role of the host in training me in certain aspects.

Well it turn out that I have specified that I was going to attend a grant writing workshop (I wrote down even the name of the workshop) as I talked about these things with the host. I also specified how the host was going to help me gaining the things the reviewers pointed out. I was so careful in that, I even specified the name of the staff in the host institution that was going to help me. Maybe it was not clear, maybe they did not read carefully, maybe the project was so shit they just wanted to reject it no matter what.

Also I had the chance to look at winning proposal. I saw they were very general about dissemination of results. Well, to made my proposal better I contacted with an open science organization and they helped me with the dissemination part with lots of suggestions. That part was super specific and had very cool stuff in it (especially oriented at open access science). I only got a 4.10 in that section while other proposal that were super generic got 4.80 or even 5.
So yes: it is luck as I see it.

The, are the excellence part the "important" part of the proposal? I know that not only the scientific part is the important.

[AdinaBabesh]

What I really don't understand is how these things happen when at least two experts read the application. They say three experts are involved. I think that points an expert didn't cover, can be covered by the others, and if one expert read superficially, the others maybe have a more careful approach of the text. I have read in the guidelines about so many quality checks ...

I don't think so. If your supervisor is an expert and published papers in the field and has supervised PhD and postdocs is fine. In my experience if the supervisor had or has access to EU funds (msca itn, if, rise or erc) than is a big plus.

To be honest, all is important including supervisor's expertise.

But...they simple go through application and search for weak points to describe them in ESR. Some comments were really silly. I planned some collaboration with clinics, and they asked me for the role of doctors in my research. It is more than obvious that their role is to recruit patients and to provide some expertise in diagnosis while i am developing diagnostic tool. I clearly emphasized this on many places in proposal.
Another was ... "approaches for transferring candidate'e knowledge to the host are not clearly described". We all know that we will help in courses, lab work, organizing workshops, etc. I also may say that some of these were in proposal.

Unfortunately you have to specify that, even if you think is implicit. Also it has to been in the right position and highlighted. For example last year the reviewers said that I had not planned grant writing workshop and in more than one occasion they said that It was not clear the role of the host in training me in certain aspects.

Well it turn out that I have specified that I was going to attend a grant writing workshop (I wrote down even the name of the workshop) as I talked about these things with the host. I also specified how the host was going to help me gaining the things the reviewers pointed out. I was so careful in that, I even specified the name of the staff in the host institution that was going to help me. Maybe it was not clear, maybe they did not read carefully, maybe the project was so shit they just wanted to reject it no matter what.

Also I had the chance to look at winning proposal. I saw they were very general about dissemination of results. Well, to made my proposal better I contacted with an open science organization and they helped me with the dissemination part with lots of suggestions. That part was super specific and had very cool stuff in it (especially oriented at open access science). I only got a 4.10 in that section while other proposal that were super generic got 4.80 or even 5.
So yes: it is luck as I see it.

[megasphaera]

What I really don't understand is how these things happen when at least two experts read the application. They say three experts are involved. I think that points an expert didn't cover, can be covered by the others, and if one expert read superficially, the others maybe have a more careful approach of the text. I have read in the guidelines about so many quality checks ...

To be honest, all is important including supervisor's expertise.

But...they simple go through application and search for weak points to describe them in ESR. Some comments were really silly. I planned some collaboration with clinics, and they asked me for the role of doctors in my research. It is more than obvious that their role is to recruit patients and to provide some expertise in diagnosis while i am developing diagnostic tool. I clearly emphasized this on many places in proposal.
Another was ... "approaches for transferring candidate'e knowledge to the host are not clearly described". We all know that we will help in courses, lab work, organizing workshops, etc. I also may say that some of these were in proposal.

Unfortunately you have to specify that, even if you think is implicit. Also it has to been in the right position and highlighted. For example last year the reviewers said that I had not planned grant writing workshop and in more than one occasion they said that It was not clear the role of the host in training me in certain aspects.

Well it turn out that I have specified that I was going to attend a grant writing workshop (I wrote down even the name of the workshop) as I talked about these things with the host. I also specified how the host was going to help me gaining the things the reviewers pointed out. I was so careful in that, I even specified the name of the staff in the host institution that was going to help me. Maybe it was not clear, maybe they did not read carefully, maybe the project was so shit they just wanted to reject it no matter what.

Also I had the chance to look at winning proposal. I saw they were very general about dissemination of results. Well, to made my proposal better I contacted with an open science organization and they helped me with the dissemination part with lots of suggestions. That part was super specific and had very cool stuff in it (especially oriented at open access science). I only got a 4.10 in that section while other proposal that were super generic got 4.80 or even 5.
So yes: it is luck as I see it.

An evaluator for the if once told me: the majority decides, so if 2 reviewers don't like the project, they will make the third reviewer change the score. I guess this is not true for all the proposal but in this forum there are plenty of examples of bad reviews, check last year forum. It is mainly our fault I guess: again, not highlighting stuff well enough.
I'm my experience is mainly the project. You can tick all the boxes but if they don't like it, does not matter.
Anyway if I will get it this year (hopefully), It will be the clear demonstration of that. In this year proposal I only changed project, host and pi; everything else is just the same with some minor adjustment from last year reviews.

[AdinaBabesh]

Yes, I know, I had also a poor quality ESR, and I have read many others in the same note, but it still surprises me ...

What I really don't understand is how these things happen when at least two experts read the application. They say three experts are involved. I think that points an expert didn't cover, can be covered by the others, and if one expert read superficially, the others maybe have a more careful approach of the text. I have read in the guidelines about so many quality checks ...

Unfortunately you have to specify that, even if you think is implicit. Also it has to been in the right position and highlighted. For example last year the reviewers said that I had not planned grant writing workshop and in more than one occasion they said that It was not clear the role of the host in training me in certain aspects.

Well it turn out that I have specified that I was going to attend a grant writing workshop (I wrote down even the name of the workshop) as I talked about these things with the host. I also specified how the host was going to help me gaining the things the reviewers pointed out. I was so careful in that, I even specified the name of the staff in the host institution that was going to help me. Maybe it was not clear, maybe they did not read carefully, maybe the project was so shit they just wanted to reject it no matter what.

Also I had the chance to look at winning proposal. I saw they were very general about dissemination of results. Well, to made my proposal better I contacted with an open science organization and they helped me with the dissemination part with lots of suggestions. That part was super specific and had very cool stuff in it (especially oriented at open access science). I only got a 4.10 in that section while other proposal that were super generic got 4.80 or even 5.
So yes: it is luck as I see it.

An evaluator for the if once told me: the majority decides, so if 2 reviewers don't like the project, they will make the third reviewer change the score. I guess this is not true for all the proposal but in this forum there are plenty of examples of bad reviews, check last year forum. It is mainly our fault I guess: again, not highlighting stuff well enough.

[megasphaera]

Yes, I know, I had also a poor quality ESR, and I have read many others in the same note, but it still surprises me ...

What I really don't understand is how these things happen when at least two experts read the application. They say three experts are involved. I think that points an expert didn't cover, can be covered by the others, and if one expert read superficially, the others maybe have a more careful approach of the text. I have read in the guidelines about so many quality checks ...

An evaluator for the if once told me: the majority decides, so if 2 reviewers don't like the project, they will make the third reviewer change the score. I guess this is not true for all the proposal but in this forum there are plenty of examples of bad reviews, check last year forum. It is mainly our fault I guess: again, not highlighting stuff well enough.

Well, my previous PI once told me: if a reviewer doesn't understand what you are writing, it is only your fault. Anyway the "expert reviewers" for the If are most of the times senior postdocs that might not have so much experience