Call of FCT's PhD Studentships received 3130 applications

On April 7, 2022, the application period for the Call for Attribution of Studentships of Research for Doctorate 2022 ended. The Call aims to grant 1450 Studentships and received a total of 3130 applications, of which 2107 were submitted on the last day of the application period. FCT expects the provisional results of Call to be announced at the end of July.

The average age of the candidates in this Call is 30 years old, with women representing 56% of the total number of applications. As for the typology of Studentship, 83% of the candidates intend to do their PhD in national institutions, 15% in a mixed regime (Portugal and abroad) and only 2% entirely abroad.

Foreign candidates represent 32%, 2% more than in Call 2021, and come from a total of 77 countries, compared to 71 last year. The countries with the most candidates to Call are Brazil (47%), Italy (8%), Iran (7%) and Spain (4%).

The scientific areas with the highest representation in the applications are Engineering and Technology Sciences (24.1%), Social Sciences (23.2%), and Humanities (16.7%).

This year, Call had for the first time a specific line for Studentships research whose work plans take place totally or partially in non-academic entities, namely in companies, collaborative laboratories, technology and innovation centers, technological interface centers, public administration entities or third sector entities. There were 130 applications for this line, representing 4.2% of all applications received.

The FCT Doctoral Research Studentships are grants awarded competitively to support advanced training in all areas of knowledge for obtaining a doctoral degree. These Studentships allow doctoral students to dedicate themselves exclusively to their research, thus contributing to the scientific and technological development of the country. Currently, the FCT has more than 7000 Studentships doctoral students in progress. In 2021, 2800 new doctoral Studentships were started.

FCT support in the area of advanced training corresponds to an annual investment of about 100M€. In addition to this funding, tuition fees are paid directly to the higher education institutions and the personal accident insurance that the grant recipients benefit from, which together represent about 16.5M€.

All information about this Call is published on the page Call for Awarding Doctoral Research Studentships 2022.