1700 researchers to take part in 127 Innovative Training Networks

Around 1700 early-stage researchers will be recruited through 127 new projects under the 2019 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Networks (MSCA-ITN) action.

The €470 million budget available this year will fund 1225 organisations (including 151 SMEs) involved in research and innovation activities.

Early-stage researchers will be recruited and trained to convert knowledge and ideas into products and services for economic and social benefit. The projects will provide researchers with enhanced career prospects both in the academic and non-academic sectors, through international, interdisciplinary and intersectoral mobility combined with an innovation-oriented mind-set.

Examples of funded projects:

Antimicrobial resistance is an increasing threat to effectively treat serious bacterial infections. To this end, tailoring antibiotic treatments to individual patients is urgently needed to maximize efficacy while minimizing the risk of promoting further resistance. The Training towards Innovative Personalized Antibiotic Therapy network, TIPAT, will train inter-disciplinary specialists optimally equipped with a skill set to address this challenge.

Intersex people are diverse and continue to face exposure to multiple forms of discrimination, requiring cross-sectoral policy responses in fields including healthcare, education, and the law. The INIA ETN proposes to train early stage researchers to develop knowledge that will inform policy-making and practice across a range of key sectors that regard intersex people. The training addresses central issues for intersex wellbeing and rights, drawing on intellectual resources provided by legal studies, gender studies, medicine and healthcare, sociology, social work, political science, social policy, cultural studies, and psychology.

The environmental project LimnoPlast will bring together environmental, technical, and social sciences with the vision to transform a new understanding of freshwater microplastics to innovative solutions. LimnoPlast will train a new type of scientists able to tackle the complex plastics issue holistically and contribute to Europe's innovation and circular economy capacity. Working at the interface of three usually very distant disciplines, they will promote a step change in how we deal with this and future environmental challenges.

The ITN PriMa aims at training the next generation of researchers and technologists who have an all-round understanding of the multidisciplinary nature of the issues involved in establishing and maintaining individual privacy. The ITN will cover the technological issues regarding privacy protection for biometric technologies as well as the related ethical, legal and psychological issues and will develop solutions that address this important societal challenge.

The Research Executive Agency will manage the 127 selected projects, which will run for four years.