Support for MSCA-IF Applicants at TUM

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.

The TUM Talent Factory also provides extensive support material for applicants to help postdocs to prepare outstanding proposals. In addition to out annual Writing Camp in summer, we support applicants who plan to apply for an Individual Fellowship with TUM as host/beneficiary. We will also try to provide feedback for Global Fellowship application with TUM as beneficiary if we have the capacities. If you have a professor at TUM who is willing to support your application, please contact us to obtain the support material. 

The MSCA Writing Camp is usually announced in May/June and open for eligible TUM researchers and external researchers who are planning to submit an appliation with TUM as the host institution. To stay informed, please sign up for our mailinglist if you are a TUM reseracher or contact the TUM Talent Factory via postdoc-application@tum.de.

More Information and Support for Applicants

For more information, please consult the websites of the

• European Commission , 
• European Liaison Office of the German Research Organisations (KoWi)
• National Contact Points for the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation – Horizon 2020 (NKS-MSC).

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:  Chair of Molecular Nanoscience & Chemical Physics of Interfaces, Prof. Wilhelm Auwärter

TUM Department: Physics

Project: Engineering Magnetic Properties of Hexagonal Boron nitride - based Hybrid Nanoarchitectures (WHITEMAG)

Academic Career and Research Areas

Dr. Marc González Cuxart graduated in Physics at the University of Barcelona in 2013, and obtained his Ph.D. in the same field at the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (Autonomous University of Barcelona) in 2019. Right after, he moved to Munich to join the group of Prof. Wilhelm Auwärter at the Chair for Molecular Nanoscience & Chemical Physics of Interfaces, where he completed one-year postdoc before being awarded with a Marie Curie Fellowship.

Dr. González Cuxart’s research activity focuses on the creation and study of low-dimensional materials, such as atomically thin layers or molecular nanostructures. By utilizing scanning tunneling microscopy techniques and synchrotron-based spectroscopies, he correlates microscopic with macroscopic observables to achieve fundamental understanding of quantum electronic, magnetic and chemical phenomena occurring at the atomic level. In particular, his EU-funded project WHITEMAG aims to induce magnetic functionalities to atomically-thin hexagonal boron nitride via doping with magnetic impurities or small metalorganic molecules. In this project, he will collaborate and perform a secondment in the group of Dr. Manuela Garnica at IMDEA (Autonomous University of Madrid).

Contact: Business Card at TUM Online | Link to website

TUM Chair:  Bioseparation Engineering Group, Prof. Dr. Sonja Berensmeier

TUM Department: Mechanical Engineering

Project: Novel Electro-Responsive Protein Separation Method with Magnetic Nanoparticles (NERS)

Academic Career and Research Areas

Dr. Schwaminger is a chemical engineer who graduated as Bachelor and Master at TUM. He completed his PhD in nanotechnology at TUM. He was a visiting postdoc at University College Dublin and started 2019 a habilitation at TUM focusing on Bio-Nanotechnology.

Dr. Schwaminger currently works on aspects of interfacial chemistry and engineering. He investigates the interactions of biological with nanoparticle surfaces. For this purpose, he studies the fundamental phenomena occurring at nanoscale interfaces and how these interfaces can be affected by external factors. Therefore, he investigates material properties such as magnetic, optic or chemical properties of nanomaterials as well as their colloidal behavior. Aside from the fundamental aspect, the application of these materials, their design and the control of the interactions with biomolecules is the focus of his research. He tries to develop stimuli-responsive materials for multiple applications in medicine, biotechnology and chemistry.

Contact: Business Card at TUM Online |  Twitter | Link to website

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: Institute of Energy-Efficient and Sustainable Design and Building , Prof. Dr. Ing. Werner Lang

TUM Department: Department of Civil, Geo and Environmental Engineering

Project: Renovating the Existing Buildings Environment through the Combination of Circular economy and the Add-on’ strategy (REBECCA)

Academic Career and Research Areas

Prof. Dr. Eng. Elena Cattani started her research and professional experience on the subject of sustainability in architecture during her university studies. In 2016, she discussed her PhD in Architecture Technology with a dissertation on the opportunities of deep renovation of existing buildings through volumetric additions - Add-ons. The work was carried out in collaboration with the University of Bologna and the University of Applied Science of Frankfurt.

She has taught at the University of Bologna, as Tutor for the Architecture Technology Course and as main chair of the Sustainable Buildings Master Course; she became Associate Professor in November 2018. As project manager and scientific supervisor, she has been at the core of the development of several H2020 research experiences and has consolidated her expertise in several EU contexts. Meanwhile she has been working freelance for her own design and engineering firm, DUETERZI, which carries out several projects on energy and building renovation in Italy and abroad.

TUM Chair: Chair of Inorganic and Metal-Organic Chemistry, Prof. Roland A. Fischer

TUM Department: Department of Chemistry

Project: Hydrophobic metal-organic adsorbents to decontaminate water from Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (HECTOR)

Academic Career and Research Areas

Dr. Soumya Mukherjee received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Pune in 2017. Followed by a 3 years’ postdoctoral research experience at the Bernal Institute, University of Limerick, Ireland, Dr. Mukherjee joined the Chair of Inorganic and Metal-organic Chemistry at Technical University of Munich in January 2020, as an Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral researcher.

As an awarded member of the Royal Society of Chemistry, Dr. Mukherjee currently works on ‘Physical chemistry and electrochemistry of metal-organic solids and surfaces’ and is keen to develop porous materials for renewable energy and environmental sustainability.

TUM Chair: Chair of Information-oriented Control, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Sandra Hirche

TUM Department: TUM Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Project: Collaborative, Decision making, and Operational Shared-Control Framework for Human-Robot Interaction (HRI-CoDeOp)

Academic Career and Research Areas

Dipl.-Ing. Music is a research assistant at the TUM Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. She has submitted her PhD thesis that focused on developing novel shared-control architecture for human-robot haptic interaction. As a researcher she has contributed to an FP7 project "WEARable HAPtics for Humans and Robots (WEARHAP)” in developing a control architecture for human-robot interaction using wearable haptic interfaces. Currently, she is working on an H2020 project "Rehabilitation based on Hybrid neuroprosthesis (ReHyb)” on developing a shared-control architecture for rehabilitation of stroke patients using a hybrid exoskeleton device.

Dipl.-Ing. Music's global MSCA fellowship will focus on developing a holistic, human-centric shared-control framework for human-robot collaboration that will consider the interaction on cognitive/decision-making level. The focus will be on telesurgery and rehabilitation applications.

TUM Chair: Chair of Biogenic Functional Materials, Prof. Dr. Rubén D. Costa

TUM Department: TUM Campus Straubing

Project: Fluorescent Protein-metal oxide NanoParticles for Bio-hybrid Light-Emitting Diodes (FPNP-BioLED)

Academic Career and Research Areas

Dr. Nieddu holds a degree in inorganic chemistry at University of Cagliari (Italy) and completed his PhD in study of metallophilic interactions between the University of La Rioja (Spain) and the University of Cagliari (Italy). He completed a postdoc in the University of Barcelona (Spain) and subsequently held a ADER Fellowship at University of La Rioja, (Spain).

Dr. Nieddu’s research concerns the development of novel photoactive theranostic nanomaterials for biomedicine. During his postdoctoral fellowship at University of La Rioja in the department of inorganic chemistry, Dr. Nieddu developed novel citotoxity nanomaterial for applications in bioimaging and phototherapy in collaboration with CIBIR technologic center.

Dr. Nieddu will be Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Technical University of Munich where his research focuses on developing BioHLED based on fluorescent nanomaterials.

TUM Chair:  Chair for Strategic Landscape Planning and Management, Prof. Dr. Stephan Pauleit

TUM Department: TUM School of Life Sciences, Weihenstephan

Project: Threats and solutions to urban tree pests and pathogens in a changing climate (TREEPACT)

Academic Career and Research Areas

Dr. Raum completed her NERC/ESRC funded PhD in environmental policy at the Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London and holds degrees in environmental assessment and management, and geography. She completed postdocs at both UK Forest Research and at Imperial College London, investigating forestry policy and management in the UK. Her previous research also examined public risk perceptions to tree diseases and stakeholder interests’ in the ecosystem goods and services provided by trees, woods and forests.

Dr. Raum currently investigates the impacts of urban tree pests and pathogens in the context of climate change. This includes an examination of risk perceptions of key stakeholders (e.g., urban planners, landscape architects, greenspace and forest managers, NGO’s) and responses to the growing threats of pests/pathogens. Disturbances due to tree pests/pathogens are expected to increase in cities, potentially threatening endeavours to increase canopy cover to help adapt to climate change.

TUM Chair:  Biological and Medical Imaging , Prof. Dr. Gil Westmeyer

TUM Department: Fakultät für Chemie

Project: Calcium-sensitive functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging as a breakthrough technique to follow brain-wide intracellular calcium dynamics defining multi-scale neuronal activity (BrainwideNeuroCaSens)

Academic Career and Research Areas

Dr. Schwalm completed her PhD in Biosciences at Goethe University (Frankfurt a.M.) and is currently a Postdoc in the Department of Biological Engineering at MIT (Cambridge, U.S.), where she works on the application of novel imaging and recording techniques to study brain-wide dynamics of neural activity.

Dr. Schwalm’s global MSCA fellowship will focus on molecular functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, a novel technique providing a molecular specific neurophysiological readout to investigate global brain activity. Dr. Schwalm will join TUM in her third year of the MSCA where she seeks to apply molecular fMRI with the aim of mapping and characterizing healthy and pathological neural signaling for preclinical approaches.

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)

MSCA IF 2017 Call

Dr. Gianluca Orlando

TUM Chair: Chair for Analysis, Prof. Dr. Marco Cicalese
TUM Department: Department of Mathematics
Project: From Bulk to Edge: Quasistatic Evolution Problems for Material Failure due to Fatigue (FatiguEvoPro)