NOVA Medical School has successfully secured the approval of three projects under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowships (MSCA-PF), one of the most competitive funding instruments of the European Horizon Europe program. The medical school of the NOVA University Lisbon achieved a success rate of 42.9%, a result well above the national average of 8.1%, highlighting the high quality and competitiveness of the submitted applications.
The MSCA-PF are funded by the European Commission and promote the international mobility of outstanding postdoctoral researchers, allowing them to conduct their research in another country and strengthen high-impact scientific careers.
The three approved fellowships will fund research contracts lasting 24 months and cover strategic areas of the School, namely research in retinal and vision diseases, cancer biology, and artificial intelligence applied to healthcare and medical imaging.
The funded projects are:
- META-GROW: “Dissecting Metabolism-Growth Crosstalk in Sex-Specific Brain Tumor Development”, led by researcher Madhulika Rai under the supervision of Professor and Principal Investigator Catarina Homem;
- MED-XAI: “Design and development of explainable DL/ML (Deep Learning / Machine Learning) model for medical image analysis with high accuracy and reliability", developed by Massoud Massoudi under the supervision of Professor and Principal Investigator Jorge Mendes;
- DREAM-RPE: “Drusen Reconstitution in an Engineered AMD (Age-related Macular Degeneration) Model using Retinal Pigment Epithelium”, led by researcher Joana Ribeiro under the supervision of Professor and Principal Investigator Miguel Seabra.
These three applications also contribute to the historic result of NOVA University, which in this call secured 11 funded proposals across four of its Organizational Units, achieving a success rate above the national and European averages (9.3%).
With this performance, NOVA Medical School strengthens its capacity to attract highly qualified talent and competitive European funding, consolidating its position as a reference institution in biomedical and clinical research, as well as in health innovation.