Support for MSCA-IF Applicants at TUM

July 29-31, 2020 at the TUM Campus City Center

In response to the European Commission’s (EC) call for applications for Marie Sklodowska Curie Individual Fellowships 2020 and TUM’s efforts to recruit and train excellent international young scientists, the TUM Talent Factory organizes a 3-day MSCA-IF Masterclass to enhance applicants' ongoing MSCA-IF proposals. The target group are international Postdocs who are planning a research stay at TUM or want to prolong their stay.

Researchers do not need to be affiliated with TUM beforehand, but need a TUM host professor willing to support their applications. They also need to fulfill the eligibility criteria:

• Mobility Rule: For the European Fellowship with TUM as a host, an applicant is eligible if s/he spent less than 12 months in the last three years prior to the deadline in Germany. For the Global Fellowship, the same rule applies to the non-European country where the applicant wants to conduct her/his research (the date is calculated from the deadline, i.e. September 9, 2020).
• Research experience: PhD or 4 years of full-time research experience
• Researchers are expected to be familiar with the call and the proposal template.

The following documents are required to apply:

• CV including Track Record
• PhD Certificate or a document that confirms the eligibility for the program
• Motivational Statement (0.5-1 page)

The motivation statement should explain why you are interested in conducting research at TU Munich/the respective chair and why you want to participate in the Writing Camp. Also explain briefly how the project you want to conduct matches the criteria for an MSCA Fellowship. Please formulate this explanation in a way that it can be understood by a general audience.  

To apply, please fill the MSCA Writing Camp application form.

The workshop will be in English. Researchers can apply until June 6, 2020 for the Writing Camp.

To give applicants who are not in Munich the possibility to participate, Travel Grants can be awarded to up to five applicants to cover travel costs and accommodation during the Writing Camp (July 28-August 1, 2020).

We are aware that it will probably not be possible to invite researchers from abroad for the workshop this year. Researchers who are currently abroad but planning to apply for an MSCA Individual Fellowship with TUM as a host are requested to apply for the Writing Camp anyway to be included in the selection process of applicants who can be supported by our trainers. Depending on the situation, we will then discuss with the trainers about a solution to support applicants who are unable to come to Munich.

The goal of the Individual Fellowships (IF) is to enhance the creative and innovative potential of experienced researchers, wishing to diversify their individual competence in terms of skill acquisition through advanced training, international and intersectoral mobility.

Individual Fellowships provide opportunities to acquire and transfer new knowledge and to work on research and innovation in a European context (EU Member States and Associated Countries) or outside Europe. The scheme particularly supports the return and reintegration of researchers from outside Europe who have previously worked here. It also develops or helps to restart the careers of individual researchers that show great potential, considering their experience.

Support is foreseen for individual, trans-national fellowships awarded to the best or most promising researchers of any nationality, for employment in EU Member States or Associated Countries. It is based on an application made jointly by the researcher and the beneficiary in the academic or non-academic sectors. Only one proposal per individual researcher will be evaluated.

For more information, please consult the websites of the European Commission or the European Liaison Office of the German Research Organisations (KoWi).

TUM Chair: Chair for Research and Science Management, Prof. Dr. Claudia Peus

TUM Department: TUM School of Management

Project: Assessing positive and destructive leadership on multiple dimensions: How to better understand and improve the behaviour of the people who lead us (LEADERPROFILE)

Academic Career and Research Areas

Dr. Emmerling completed her PhD in cognitive neuroscience at Maastricht University and holds a degree in systemic coaching (DGPS). She completed a postdoc in the Netherlands and subsequently held a Nils Stensen Fellowship at Oxford University, UK. She declined a three-year British Academy Post-doctoral Fellowship to join the Chair for Research and Science Management at TUM.

Dr. Emmerling currently works on unravelling the multi-facetted mechanisms underlying destructive leadership on behavioural, cognitive, and biological level. Her past research focuses on the behavioural and neural enhancement of cognitive control, response inhibition, and impulse control. Particularly, she investigated how inhibitory processing is mirrored in neural networks (employing brain imaging and non-invasive brain stimulation), how these networks can be modulated by multi-level interventions, and how such modulations are linked to impulsive and aggressive behaviour and other forms of self-control failure.

Contact: Business Card in TUMonline | Twitter

TUM Chair: Professorship on Experimental Semiconductor Physics, Prof. Ian D. Sharp

TUM Department: Walter Schottky Institute, Physics Department

Project: Functional Electrical Contacts to Two-Dimensional Materials with Tunable Interfacial Oxides, ProTOC

Academic Career and Research Areas

Dr. Henning’s research concerns the development of novel materials for more energy-efficient nanoelectronics devices. During his Ph.D. at Tel Aviv University in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Dr. Henning developed a novel transistor for sensing applications employing silicon-on-insulator technology in collaboration with a semiconductor foundry (TowerJazz). He was awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) for his research in the Department of Materials Science & Engineering at Northwestern University where he established novel atomic layer deposition (ALD) processes for the dielectric integration of 2D materials.

Currently, Dr. Henning is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Walter Schottky Institute of the Technical University of Munich where his research focuses on developing functional coatings and carrier-selective contacts to 2D materials using plasma-enhanced ALD.

Contact: Business Card in TUMonline | LinkedIn | Scholar | Research Gate

TUM Chair: Lehrstuhl für Botanik,  Prof. Farhah Assaad

TUM Department: Department of Plant Sciences

Project: Understanding the essential function of the conserved plant- specific protein phosphatase family BSL (BSLchlamy)

Academic Career and Research Areas

Dr. Frej completed his M.S. at the KTH in Stockholm. He then received a Ph.D. from The Rockefeller University where he studied cell division control in the green alga Chlamydomonas. He is now continuing the study of fundamental questions in plant cell biology with Prof. Assaad at the TUM and Prof. Wang at the Carnegie Institution at Stanford.

As an MSCA fellow (MSCA-IF Global Fellowship), Dr. Frej uses the unicellular Chlamydomonas as a simple system to investigate the ancestral role of a family of plant-specific phosphatases (called BSL). These phosphatases play important roles in both hormone signaling and pathogen defense in higher plants, but their molecular activities in the cell are still largely unknown.   

TUM Chair:  Chair for Analysis, Prof. Dr. Marco Cicalese 

TUM Department: Department of Mathematics

Project: Quasistatic Evolution Problems for Material Failure due to Fatigue (FatiguEvoPro)

Academic Career and Research Areas

Dr. Gianluca Orlando moved to Munich after completing his PhD in Mathematics in SISSA, Trieste, Italy in 2016. His research focuses on problems in Calculus of Variations arising in Materials Science, with the aim of proving existence of solutions to evolutionary models and giving deeper understanding of their formulation.

Dr. Gianluca Orlando is currently interested in the analysis of models in Fracture Mechanics, a branch of Continuum Mechanics intended to understand the behavior of materials which undergo failure, such as damage, plasticity, or fracture. Specifically, his project focuses on fatigue, the process by which a solid exhibit a loss of its elastic properties as a consequence of repeated cycles of loading and unloading.

Contact: Business Card in TUMonline 

MSCA IF 2014 Call

Manuela Garnico Alonso

TUM Chair: Professur für Molekulare Nanowissenschaft an Grenzflächen, Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Auwärter
TUM Department: TUM Department of Physics
Project: Beyond Graphene: Fundamental properties of 2D materials at the atomic scale (2DNano)

Zdeněk Tošner

TUM Chair: Professur für Festkörper-NMR-Spektroskopie, Prof. Dr. Bernd Reif and Prof. Glaser (co-supervisor)
TUM Department: TUM Department of Chemistry 
Project: Optimal control methods for biological solid state nuclear magnetic resonance (OPTIMAL NMR)

Pietro Falco

TUM Chair: Associate Professorship of Human-centered Assistive Robotics, Prof. Dongheui Lee
TUM Department: Fakultät für Elektrotechnik und Informationstechnik
Project: LEArning-CONtrol tight interaction: a novel approach to robust execution of mobile manipulation tasks (LEACON)

MSCA IF 2015 Call

Dr. Barbara Lechner

TUM Chair: Chair of Physical Chemistry, Prof. Ueli Heiz
TUM Department: Chemistry
Project: Characterising the dynamical properties of size-selected supported metal clusters (ClusterDynamics)

Dr. Irene Bighelli

TUM Chair: Klinik und Poliklinik für Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie, Prof. Stefan Leucht
TUM Department: TUM School of Medicine 
Project: Schizophrenia Psychological Interventions: Network Meta-Analysis of randomized evidence (SPIN-MA)

Dr. Javier Virto

TUM Chair: Lehrstuhl für Theoretische Elementarteilchenphysik, Prof. Martin Beneke
TUM Department: TUM Department of Physics 
Project: Non-Leptonic Three-Body B Decays: Theory and Phenomenology (NIOBE)

Dr. Madleen Busse

TUM Chair: Lehrstuhl für Angewandte Biophysik, Prof. Pfeiffer
TUM Department: TUM Department of Physics 
Project: CONtrast through metal-enriched polymer SALTs: novel contrast agents for dual-energy micro-computed tomography (CONSALT)

Dr. Siwei Bai

TUM Chair: Bioanaloge Informationsverarbeitung, Prof. Dr. Hemmert, Werner
TUM Department: Fakultät für Elektrotechnik und Informationstechnik 
Project: Advanced Computational Model for the Development of Cochlear Implants (CIModelPLUS) 

Dr. Francesco Maurelli

TUM Chair: Institut für Informatik VI - Robotics and Embedded Systems, Prof. Alois Knoll
TUM Department: TUM Department of Informatics
Project: Towards Intelligent Cognitive AUVs (TIC AUV)

MSCA IF 2016 Call

Dr. Pablo Lanillos

TUM Chair: Institute for Cognitive Systems, Prof. Dr. Gordon Cheng
TUM Department: Electrical and Computer Engineering 
Project: Robotic self/other distinction for interaction under uncertainty (SELFCEPTION)

Dr. Paul D’Agostino

TUM Chair: Professorship of Biosystems Chemistry, Prof. Dr. Tobias A. M. Gulder
TUM Department: Chemistry 
Project: Direct Pathway Cloning of Neglected Bacteria in the Hunt for Novel (Bio-)Chemistry (DiPaC_MC)

Dr. Marta Tena-Solsona

TUM Chair: Chair of Supramolecular Chemistry, Prof. Dr. Job Boekhoven
TUM Department: Chemistry 
Project: Dissipative Self-Assembly: A powerful but unexplored tool to create temporary supramolecular hydrogels (DisMolGels)

Dr. David Luitz

TUM Chair: Professorship on Theoretical Solid-State Physics, Prof. Frank Pollmann
TUM Department: Physics Department
Project: Dynamical Phenomena in Quantum Many-Body Systems (QMBDyn)

Dr. Cecile Repellin

TUM Chair: Professorship on Theoretical Solid-State Physics, Prof. Frank Pollmann
TUM Department: Physics Department 
Project: From Bulk to Edge: Realization and Characterization of Fractionalized Quantum Matter (sharpEDGE)