One hundred researchers receive doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships

105 researchers will develop their projects in Spain and Portugal thanks to the 65 fellowships awarded in the framework of the doctoral INPhINIT programme and the 40 of the postdoctoral Junior Leader programme.

The ”la Caixa” Foundation has awarded 105 new doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships to excellent researchers to carry out their projects at universities and research centres in Spain and Portugal. With the INPhINIT doctoral and Junior Leader postdoctoral fellowships, the ”la Caixa” Foundation pursues the dual objective of retaining and attracting talent to promote research excellence in these countries.

These fellowships offer competitive salaries and multidisciplinary training. In the case of doctoral fellowships, the programme reinforces such aspects as scientific communication, emotional well-being of the researcher, leadership and funding opportunities. Postdoctoral fellowships promote independent scientific careers as a future professional option and foster innovation and leadership.

“At the ”la Caixa” Foundation, we work every day to build a better society for everyone, and to do this we need to be very attentive to the new needs and challenges of the present and the future. This is the raison d’être of the doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships, which reaffirm our commitment to excellence in education and research in order to build a better and healthier world based on knowledge,” said Elisa Durán, deputy general director of the ”la Caixa” Foundation, during the award ceremony held at the CosmoCaixa Science Museum.

The ”la Caixa” Foundation Fellowship Programme is the most important of those promoted by private entities in Spain and Europe, both in terms of the number of fellowships offered and the variety of disciplines. In total, the Foundation will allocate almost 21 million euros to this support for doctoral and postdoctoral fellows. Both programmes have been co-funded by the European Commission through the Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND Actions in the context of the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme.

Profile of the fellows

Of the 105 fellows selected in this edition, 49 are Spanish and 56 are foreign, from 21 countries. Of these, Italy is the country with the highest number of fellowship holders, 16. It is followed by Portugal, with nine, Germany, with six, and four are from the United States.

The fellowships awarded have been distributed among more than 60 research centres and universities in Spain and Portugal. In terms of specialisations, theoretical physics and mathematics top the list with nine fellows, followed by environmental sciences, materials science and technology, and biomedical engineering and technology, with seven fellows each.