1. What exactly was different in the case of MSCA between Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe?

ITN was renamed Doctoral Networks (MSCA-DN), IF Postdoctoral Fellowships (MSCA-PF) and RISE Staff Exchanges (MSCA-SE). COFUND and MSCA & Citizens proceed with simplified regulations. The overall goal, mobility and high-quality training, stays, and intersectoral exposure, open science, and more precise impact pathways have more emphasis.

2. ITN / vs. Doctoral Networks: what are the actual differences?

Doctoral enrolment was no longer optional (as required by ETN in H2020), but compulsory to all recruited researchers under MSCA-DN. Deadlines for Consortia with a potential to fund up to 15 doctoral researchers under H2020 have been limited by default (10 per consortium) to Industrial Doctorates or Joint Doctorates. Transferable skills and secondments should be incorporated into training plans rather than listed freely; the evaluators seek a logical training structure.

3. What changed in Postdoctoral Fellowships (IF-PF)?

To it there were a number of European IF flavours (ST, CAR, RI, SE) and a Global scheme. Under Horizon Europe, European PF is amalgamated into one scheme (as well as Global), retained the mobility rule (less than 12 months in the host country in the last 36 months), and added an organised non-academic placement option of up to 6 months in case the PF is placed in academia. It is now more overt in the evaluation narrative that is based on career development and acquisition of intersectoral skills.

4. And RISE vs. Staff Exchanges: what is new?

Intersectuality was once a rigorous one. Single-sector consortia can be implemented under Horizon Europe, provided they are interdisciplinary, genuinely non-probability, and pass the cross-border mobility logic. The aim has now been formulated as clearly international, interdisciplinary and intersectoral collaboration, and the management arrangements ought to mirror the depth (balanced flows, outlines of supervision, tasks which involve definitive transfer of knowledge).

5. Were the eligibility and mobility policies altered?

In the case of PFs, the anchor mobility rule applies uniformly; the fellow should not have spent or undertaken his principal activity longer than 12 months in the home country during the 36 months prior to the date of the call. For DNs, doctoral/early-stage researchers can usually be hired for 36 months with a project horizon of 48 months. To a third country, global PFs nevertheless involve an outgoing step with a compulsory return step in Europe.

6. Any great surprises regarding budgets and unit costs?

No structural surprises: unit contributions still contain a living allowance, a mobility allowance, an optional family allowance, and institutional contributions to research/training and management/overheads, which are adjusted by country correction coefficients. At the framework level, the MSCA envelope increased slightly compared to the H2020 period (to Horizon Europe, on a multi-billion-euro scale, over seven years). To the applicants, this change will have no impact: construct Part B on a researcher-months basis and shortlist concrete expenses (consumables, microfabrication runs, imaging time, software, secondments).

7. What makes evaluators now convinced when I am using microfluidics and I want PF or DN?

Concreteness. Identify the chip architecture (e.g., flow-focusing droplet generators, impedance cytometry), the fabrication stack (e.g., soft lithography vs. glass-silicon), and the throughput you think you will achieve (samples/hour, coefficient of variation, limit of detection). Associate secondments with certain instruments and datasets. Measures training: time of practical laboratory work, released benchmark sets, and projected progress of TRL. This makes the “impact” promise plan.

8. What are your tips with respect to the writing of a competitive proposal under Horizon Europe MSCA?

Limit a page at most to two or three promises, and give a quantitative value to every promise. Assign the map to skill deficiencies, not to timeframes. Write open-science and data-management decisions on paper (repository names, access levels, metadata). In the case of DNs, the reason is a plan: who trains whom, what they are trained in, how many hours, and how they are assessed. Do not use boilerplate; use numbers.

9. Is MIC able to intervene before the call opens?

Yes. We can stress-test the idea behind scheme-fit, design the microfluidic system end-to-end, develop the training/impact matrix with intersectoral exposure, and schedule a realistic prototyping/data-release process. MIC is also involved in regular European consortia, proposal writing, and delivery of prototypes, which is especially good in MSCA, where training-by-doing and real-world instrumentation are at the center stage.