Researcher blogs

A how-to guide

This post is about tips on preparing your Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowships (MSCA-PF)[1] application based on my personal experience. I have just got my MSCA-PF approved at the beginning of 2025 and I’m here to help you have a healthy and enjoyable experience writing it. Basically, what I wish someone had told me back then.

First and foremost, if you are interested in applying for the MSCA-PF and you are at KI or are planning to come to KI, please register for the MSCA bootcamp, organized by Ying Zhao at the Grants Office. Ying knows an absurd amount of information about the grant, and I would have had a much harder time writing it if it wasn’t for her and the bootcamp team.. This incredible resource is there for you, use it! That being said, I will not relay any information from the boot camp other than advertise it.. (By the way, it’s also a great way to make friends – proven by my WhatsApp group called “bootcamp survivor’s” with regular pub after works.)
Now, before this post becomes a huge bootcamp advertisement, let’s get on with it.

1^st Read the documentation

This sounds obvious but read the call text!

My experience? I thought I had read enough and started writing the proposal, I was eager. Turns out I had to go back and forth too often; it wasn’t clear to me what I needed to have in each part of the grant. I ended up taking a step back and finding the time to read carefully and make notes of the most important points.

My advice? Go through all the documentation. You will be judged based on these. In general, grants are about what the foundations are willing to fund/their interests, not yours. Not all proposals will fit all grants, and that’s ok. But remember that to be competitive, your proposed project needs to match the funder’s interests. If they happen to align with yours – jackpot! You’ve got a chance.  

When going through the call, take notes about your own project:

• How do I fit here?
• What within my project is relevant to this question?

Write everything that comes to mind. Your brain is smart. Your first associations are likely correct. Don’t worry about it, you will trim it afterwards. Only the important will stay. It is only 10 pages after all.

2^nd Have a career goal

If you are an overthinker like me, chances are that you don’t have one career plan, but plans B, C, and D instead (for Formula 1 fans, I’m like the Ferrari team, except I still hope my plans will work). Or maybe you are a chill person and have no plans at all (I envy you, please teach me!). But the deal is that this is a career development grant. You have 2-3 years to develop a project and get yourself the experience you need to increase your chances of success in the future.

My experience? To be honest with you, the fact that I wanted to write this grant actually forced me to stop and think about my career more closely. It even helped me work out some anxiety issues. And I am so glad I did. It helped to make my proposal coherent, not to mention it was much more fulfilling to write.

My advice? Have a career plan. Now, this doesn’t mean that you must have everything figured out! I know I don’t. But you should have one realistic plan that you are willing to follow through. It should make sense with the project and career development that you are writing in your proposal. As a funding entity, why would the EU invest money in you? Because your project is good, but also because they can make a difference for your development as a professional, which will give them, and society, return in the future. In my case I am not 100% sure I want to continue in academia. But that is my plan A, and I wrote it accordingly. But I also made sure that some of the experience that I will acquire is transferable, such as project management skills, analytical thinking, and so on. The reviewers are human beings; they will understand that “life is lifing” and we don’t always have answers. But human beings are also good at reading in between the lines, they will see right through your writing if something is unclear or if your plan is far too messy to have good chances of success.

3^rd Plan your writing

I cannot emphasize this enough: plan your proposal! Know how you are going to write it.

My experience? I made the mistake of starting with my project methods thinking I would move on quickly. I planned it as if I was writing a paper. “This is the easiest to describe, I know how I will conduct the methods” – I remember telling myself. I couldn’t be more wrong. After filling in the rest, I realized there was so much I hadn’t described in the proposal. Things we don’t worry about in a paper:

• Who will do what?
• Do I have the equipment for it?
• Do I know how to use that equipment?
• Do I need training before?
• Where will I acquire it?

Suddenly I am faced with a schedule (Gantt chart[2]) that looks like a Frankenstein doll where I patched every little course in and was trying to stitch it by describing more in my CV. No, no, no… this is three weeks before the deadline and I am starting from zero.

I basically started all over again, but this time, I had a plan. I began by outlining the project! What is another training in your plan worth if it is clear on your Gantt chart that you won’t have time for it?

My advice? Do yourself a favour and invest (don’t spend) some time and effort in outlining things, before you write it. You have read the documentation, and you have thought of a feasible and interesting career plan for you. Great! – Or not, but you will, I trust you. Bear with me!

Now, if I had to start writing this proposal again, I would start by outlining my objectives and how they are connected with each other. Is objective 2 dependent on objective 1? Is there something I could do in parallel? This will help you figure out your Work Packages. Now put them on a timeline (with a margin of error, this is educated guesses ballpark). Great, now ask yourself, for each of these objectives, what do you need to achieve them? In terms of knowledge, equipment, training? Do you need samples from somewhere? Ethical approval? Now write these topics in the appropriate part of the proposal so you can develop them later. Maybe it is a skill you already have. Then put it on your CV and on the skills that you bring to the table. Is it something you need to learn? Then find a course or someone that can teach you and account for that in your activities. You got the gist of it.

4^th Editing is for later

By this time, if you decided to follow my advice, you should have your Gantt Chart ready and an outline of everything you think you should mention in each part of the proposal. Now expand it and write it out properly.

My experience? I worried about details too soon. I would have spared myself some time if I edited later, since much work is undone.

My advice? I would say don’t worry about form at this stage. Just try to explain everything as detailed as possible. They will want the most detailed explanations that you can fit in a 10-page document. I know. Impossible, right? But I think a good way of doing this is describing more than you need and then rephrasing it to be more concise or cutting out non-essentials later.

Anyways, not much to say here really. You do you! You are a successful young researcher that just finished a PhD. You know better than me what works. You’ll slay it!

5^th Ask for feedback early on

My experience? I wish I had more time to account for other people’s feedback.

My advice? Once you’ve got corrections from your supervisor, the best scenario here is to ask for feedback from colleagues in adjacent fields to yours as well. It helps to ask about people’s availability and the possibility to get feedback as soon as you know that you will write the application. Maybe you have trusted friends, a collaborator, someone even outside academia, that can give you a different perspective.

Remember that the reviewers will not all be familiar with your specific field of research. They are scientists alright, but they might not know details about the methods you are using or even the relevance of your research. So lay it all out. Use terminology that a scientist outside your own field will understand. Explain abbreviations, give short summaries of methods that seem obvious to you and never forget to point out the implications, even if they are obvious to you. Of course, it is still important to have feedback from your lab colleagues, but they will probably have the same blind spots that you have when it comes to missing details. At this stage, however, you will need to pick and choose which are the most relevant suggestions you should include in your proposal. You most likely already have passed your 10-page limit, so you will need to be smart about how to incorporate things in your writing, where you can cut, what you can rephrase to fit. And this unfortunately takes time to get done well. That’s why the sooner you can get your proposal out to colleagues the better. It doesn’t have to be the absolute final version – the point is that it won’t be anyways!

But Alana, I have no one to help me with this, everyone is busy. Well, we have C-3POs now! I think this is the absolute best use of AI when writing. Revision. You can ask LLMs what did they understand from your text, what could be clearer. Ask them to be your agent, explain their role and chat it away. Try more than one. And as always with advice, you have the final say on whether you think it is relevant or not.

That all being said, please seek approval from your supervisor and think of your intellectual property. Maybe you can only share pieces of information with the AI or with colleagues, but it is still better than nothing. You will also have to disclose the use of AI and LLMs.

---

And this was my 5-step not that magical formula to write your proposal. I believe that planning goes a long way when writing, as you start from a framework that makes sense and is somewhat coherent. Come to think of it now, this might make more sense for you overthinkers out there. But still, starting on time is crucial. Regardless of whether you decide to follow anything I have written, I hope you can take something away from my experience. Every person and proposal will be unique, with its own challenges and strengths. Remember that you have value and so does your work. You can do it!

Now, if you are curious about the mindset I had writing it, I simply saw it as a good experience. I remember thinking – “If you don’t get it funded so what? Most people won’t, unfortunately. But you gained experience in writing a grant. You’ve got a deeper understanding of your project. Maybe you can even use it as a starting point to apply for other grants.”

But whatever happens, as long as you did your best, please remember that it is likely not your fault! There are a bazillion reasons why it might be rejected, and you have to accept that although a good part of it is merit, there is an element of chance. Who were the reviewers? How well were you feeling? How fitting was the project? And so on. Maybe it has to do with the fact that we researchers are generally underpaid, overworked and funding is limited while we have so many brilliant and deserving researchers on this planet…but I digress.

Anyway, I have got many, many applications rejected throughout the years – trust me, I know how it feels. But that’s why we keep trying, and improving, because probability my friends😊, go for it!

Finally, I’d like to say some things I wish I could say to myself more often: Remember that you are doing your best – under the circumstances you’re in, maybe, but that is still your best, be proud of it! And be kind to yourself, and others (some forget). Go for a walk, drink water, prioritize your needs. And have fun! – this is something you are passionate about, use this opportunity to visualize and look forward to it.

I wish you success! On your grant writing, at work, and in life.

Until we meet again,

Alana

Featured image: Portrait of Marie Curie [1867 – 1934], Polish chemist – Wellcome Collection, United Kingdom – CC BY.