Between 2018-2020 Dana was an MSC fellow and researched neural circuitry and anatomy underlying sexually dimorphic behaviours in Drosophila in the laboratory of Greg Jefferis at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK. Her project identified how brain connectivity patterns govern sex-specific behaviour including courtship and aggression. This research was published in 2023.

Dana is currently a Senior Policy Advisor in the Engineering Biology team at the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade in the UK Government. In this role she leads a portfolio of policy areas supporting engineering Biology, including Talent and Skills, Research and Development, and Strategy.

What was the biggest obstacle you faced when preparing your proposal or starting this project?

When I applied for my MSCA project, PiCOGAMBAS, I was at a point in my career where, after several postdoctoral positions, I felt the need to grow, both in visibility within my field – cosmology – and in my skill set, or risk leaving academia. I knew the coming years would be rich with opportunities as the experimental collaborations I was and still am part of were about to begin observations. New data was on the horizon and I was eager to engage. I saw an opportunity to explore new ways of combining these datasets to tackle open questions about the nature of dark matter, dark energy, and inflation. However, I didn’t know how to translate my motivation and ideas into a coherent project. 

I knew the MSCA would be an incredible opportunity to carry out my research with the freedom to explore my ideas without being tied to a specific project. But proposing such an ambitious project felt like a stretch for me at the time – I wasn’t entirely sure I had the experience to pull it off, and a previous unsuccessful attempt had been difficult to move past. 

Over the years, I had the chance to work with many inspiring collaborators who were incredibly supportive and helped me structure and clarify my ideas. 

The biggest obstacles in preparing the proposal were threefold: First, overcoming my own doubts and convincing myself (before the evaluation panel) that I was capable of putting the project together; Second, identifying the institutions where I could shape my program and that would provide an environment at the forefront of the field, with leading experts to push me to develop the skills and confidence I needed; and third, logistical challenges – starting an MSCA Global Fellowship during the COVID-19 pandemic, when travel and border crossings were difficult, proved to be a hurdle. Fingers crossed, this won’t happen again in the future. 

I had the chance to work with many inspiring collaborators

I should also mention that finding a credible, funny, yet descriptive acronym helped me stay grounded and entertained during the hectic days of writing.

Describe how this project enabled you to be on the path to success. What is your current institution?

PiCOGAMBAS enabled me to work at the intersection of theory, algorithms and observations in cosmology. I was able to contribute to groundbreaking analyses probing the properties of dark matter during an epoch of the universe’s history never explored before-and beyond the reach of laboratory experiments. The Global MSCA project’s emphasis on cross-border mobility allowed me to collaborate with leading experts at Cardiff University and the Simons Foundation, expanding my expertise in numerical simulations, AI, and data analysis. 

At the time, I wasn’t sure if this path would lead to a long-term career in research, but the skills I acquired during the conception and writing of the grant, as well as the results I obtained, gave me the confidence to apply for prestigious fellowship programs, such as the UKRI/STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellowship, which I secured in 2024 at Cardiff University. This was a crucial step toward a faculty position, and I am certain my application would not have been as strong or convincing without my MSCA experience.

Career opportunities are unpredictable, and today, as Director of Research at CNRS in France, I’m happy to say that this path did become my career. I continue to build on PiCOGAMBAS’ legacy, and the skills and network I developed have directly led to my stronger involvement and leadership responsibilities in the Euclid Space Telescope and the Simons Observatory – the leading experiments observing the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation. I am now combining data from these two incredible instruments to investigate the properties of dark matter, neutrinos, and dark energy across the entire history of the universe, from the Big Bang to the present day.

I am certain my application would not have been as strong or convincing without my MSCA experience.

What is one piece of advice you would give others trying to replicate this success?

My success story, in many ways, is a story of several failures, but also of persistence, and perhaps luck, I would say. Don’t be discouraged by failures, and don’t shy away from trying. You often have more skills and value than you might initially realize. Remember too, that writing a successful proposal is a learning curve. 

Another piece of advice I’d share is to embrace interdisciplinary work and actively seek out discussions with colleagues from different backgrounds. While it can be challenging to establish a shared language, some of the most valuable insights in my project came from casual conversations with astronomers, particle physicists, and data scientists. These exchanges helped bridge gaps between fields and sparked new ideas that led to the most interesting results of my work.

Don’t be discouraged by failures, and don’t shy away from trying. You often have more skills and value than you might initially realize.

Also, take advantage of the mobility and networking opportunities the MSCA offers. Collaborating with diverse, international teams across the world was invaluable for me, both professionally and personally. I feel that using science to create bridges is especially meaningful, valuable and important now, in these difficult times.

What was the biggest obstacle you faced when preparing your proposal or starting this project?

The MSCA is well-known in Europe as one of the most prestigious international postdoctoral fellowships, and during my PhD it was my dream to obtain one. I applied for an MSCA to combine the work I had done during my PhD in the Netherlands with unique scientific expertise at University College London (UCL) in the UK. My PhD work showed that mental imagery and visual perception activate many of the same brain regions. The MSCA gave me the possibility to further investigate whether this neural overlap could lead to people confusing imagination for reality. 

During my MSCA-funded time at UCL, I learned new techniques such as psychophysics and computational modelling to be able to answer this question. Together with supervisors at UCL, we found evidence that the brain uses a ‘reality threshold’ to determine whether sensory activation reflects reality or imagination. This discovery was named by Quanta Magazine as one of the top three discoveries in Neuroscience and Biology of 2023. The work done during my MSCA formed the basis of the ERC Starting Grant on the ‘Neurocomputational underpinnings of perceptual reality monitoring’ that went on to fund the start of my lab at the Institute of Neurology in UCL at the start of 2025. At the Imagine Reality Lab, we combine a range of techniques from neuroscience and AI to understand the relationship between reality and imagination in our brain.

From CogNovo to Telomeres: A Long-Arc MSCA Research-Impact Story 

When I joined the CogNovo Marie Skłodowska-Curie doctoral training programme at the University of Plymouth, I expected to deepen my understanding of psychology and consciousness research. What I did not anticipate was that the programme would fundamentally reshape the way I thought about scientific questions. 

CogNovo brought together researchers from psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, molecular biology, computer science, design and the arts. Rather than remaining within disciplinary boundaries, we were encouraged to ask questions that crossed them. Looking back, this was perhaps the most enduring outcome of my MSCA fellowship – not simply learning new methods, but learning a new way of thinking. 

It was during this period that I began developing what later became known as the psilocybin–telomere hypothesis. Drawing on ideas from psychology, neuroscience, stress biology and cellular ageing, I proposed a possible link between serotonergic psychedelic signalling, oxidative stress, telomere dynamics and biological ageing. The hypothesis was later published in Medical Hypotheses in 2019. 

What I did not anticipate was that the programme would fundamentally reshape the way I thought about scientific questions. 

At the time, it was simply that-a bold and refutable hypothesis intended to stimulate discussion and encourage experimental work. Like many interdisciplinary ideas, it asked questions that lay between established research fields. It was not presented as a clinical claim, but as a testable scientific hypothesis. 

Several years later, however, the story took an unexpected turn. In 2025, Kato and colleagues published experimental work in npj Aging, a Nature Portfolio journal, reporting that psilocin extended cellular lifespan in human cells and that psilocybin improved survival in aged mice. In their discussion, the authors concluded that their findings supported the previously proposed psilocybin–telomere hypothesis, providing the first experimental evidence consistent with the original idea. 

Around the same time, Professor Louise Hecker publicly described encountering the original hypothesis paper as something that ‘stopped me dead in my tracks’, explaining that, because her laboratory studies ageing, she immediately thought: ‘I can test this’. Seeing an idea developed during my MSCA training inspire independent experimental research several years later was both unexpected and deeply rewarding. 

More recently, the work has also attracted broader public interest through science communication, interviews and the development of an online bibliometric database dedicated to mapping research on psychedelics and ageing. What began as an interdisciplinary question during my Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship has continued to evolve in ways I could not have anticipated at the time.  

For me, this illustrates one of the greatest strengths of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions. Their impact is not limited to the projects completed during a fellowship. By fostering curiosity, mobility and genuine interdisciplinarity, they equip researchers to ask questions that might never emerge within a single discipline-and sometimes those questions continue generating new research long after the fellowship itself has ended. 

Rather than remaining within disciplinary boundaries, we were encouraged to ask questions that crossed them.

Looking back, I see the lasting legacy of my Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship not simply in a publication or a hypothesis, but in a way of thinking. CogNovo taught me to approach scientific questions without regard for disciplinary boundaries. The resulting hypothesis was only one outcome of that mindset. Its later independent experimental exploration illustrates something much broader – that the long-term impact of MSCA-supported research often lies not only in the discoveries made during a fellowship, but in the new questions that fellows are equipped to ask-and that others may later pursue.  

If I were to offer one piece of advice to future MSCA fellows, it would be to embrace interdisciplinarity wholeheartedly. Some of the most rewarding research questions emerge not within established disciplines, but at the boundaries between them. 

Key references 

Original hypothesis paper (Medical Hypotheses) 
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mehy.2019.109406 

Independent experimental follow-up (npj Aging) 
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41514-025-00244-x 

What was the biggest obstacle you faced when preparing your proposal or starting this project?

One of the biggest challenges was that I was effectively starting to learn a new scientific area from scratch. My background was in biomaterials – silk fibroin-based biocompatible functional coatings for breast implant applications – and the advantage of an MSCA postdoctoral fellowship is that you can learn a new scientific area, and you have to. At the end, what makes a good proposal is the fit between the applicant, the mentor and the institute. During my PhD, I developed an interest in 3D printing and organ-on-a-chip, and I wanted to learn microfluidics for that reason. The good part of my application process was that I was already in the lab for a couple of months, and with the help of Dr Nicolas Martin on stimuli-responsive LLPS droplets and the great Bio 2.0 team, I was associated with, I was helped to design a new project area with the expertise of Prof Yuval Elani at Imperial College London on membrane biophysics.

I had to learn a new application-based science to basic-science experimentation framework – synthesising and imaging giant unilamellar vesicles, generating and characterising coacervate droplets, and quantifying membrane-coacervate behaviour. The conceptual leap was hard enough, but the practical one was harder – building real competence in unfamiliar techniques while still being expected to deliver results. There were long stretches when progress was slow and nothing worked, and the only way through was patience and persistence.

Describe how this project enabled you to be on the path to success. What is your current institution?

My MSCA fellowship at the Centre de Recherche Paul Pascal (CRPP, CNRS) in Bordeaux and secondment at Imperial College London gave me the protected time and independence to make that transition properly, rather than in the margins of supervised research. The key result from the MSCA fellowship, showing that coacervate droplets selectively wet phase-separated giant unilamellar vesicles to build Janus-like protocells, was recently published in Nature Communications and has become the quantitative foundation of my own research programme in synthetic cell engineering.

Beyond the paper, the fellowship gave me a network and a distinctive question to transition to develop my own research programme. I am now based at Imperial College London, transitioning toward an independent group leader role and building the research direction that the fellowship made possible.

What is one piece of advice you would give others trying to replicate this success?

When I moved from biomaterials into bottom-up synthetic biology, I spent months struggle to optimise the GUV synthesis itself. It would have been easy to panic about the papers I wasn't publishing, to start chasing quick, safe results just to have something to show. I have a curiosity for science not for papers. I kept my attention on the science itself – asking the questions that actually encouraged me and taking the time to understand the system properly, even when that was slower.

Looking back, that was the right call. The good science compounded quietly: the clean result came, and with it the collaborations and the recognition. I've come to believe the metrics tend to follow work you genuinely believe in – rarely the other way around. And there's a quieter risk in chasing numbers, which is that you can lose the curiosity that made you a scientist in the first place. My advice to anyone starting out is to protect that curiosity above almost everything else.

What did you gain from MSCA that wasn't in your proposal? For example, lifelong collaborators, confidence, leadership skills, industry connections, moving country, learning another language, public engagement experience.

I am grateful to have been awarded a, MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship after the agreement between the European Commission and the UK Government in 2024, which reopened opportunities for researchers to build their careers in the UK. My fellowship is based at the Institute of Cancer Research in London where I study the mechanisms of immune evasion in breast cancer using a combination of multi-omic and spatial biology approaches.

From my personal experience, the MCSA Program has allowed me to meet innovative minds from different disciplines and countries, reframe the way I think about and approach challenges in my field, and build lasting connections and collaborations around the world. Beyond the scientific opportunities, I would highlight the impressive community and resources offered by the Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA), including career support, mentoring from previous awardees, and opportunities to engage with professionals across academia, industry, policy and business. These experiences have helped me grow both personally and professionally, increased my visibility and leadership skills, and reinforced the importance of international collaboration in driving scientific discovery.

From a small village in India to European science: How MSCA gave me the courage and acceleration to build career in translational nanomedicine

Science is often described as a career of discovery. For me, it has also been a career of dreams: across disciplines, countries, cultures and possibilities. However, it wasn’t only a passion for science that brought me to Europe but a beloved Shahrukh Khan’s Bollywood movie DDLJ (Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge) which was set in London and Europe and really influenced me to move here. It has no connection to my professional career, but it motivated me to come here in pursuit of it and MSCA help me to chase my dream to see the world like the dialogue in the movie ‘Bade bade deshon mein, aisi chhoti chhoti baatein hoti rehti hain, Senorita.’ ‘In big countries, such small things keep happening, Senorita.’

I began my journey far from the major centres of European research, in a small village, Andharia in West Bengal, India, with curiosity as my only real passport. My academic training moved from chemistry to biochemistry, then to nanotechnology, and later to translational biomedical science. At each stage, I was learning not only new techniques but a new language of possibility: How materials behave at the nanoscale, how cells respond to nanoscale systems, and how a scientific idea might one day become a therapy that changes a patient’s life.

The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions fellowship was one of the defining turning points in that journey. When I moved to Cambridge with my EU Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship, I was not simply changing institution and country – I was changing my scientific identity. I was moving from being someone who is excited about innovation to someone who could begin shaping how to translate those for greater impact. The fellowship instantly gave me freedom, time, trust and international visibility and, more important, the confidence to ask bigger questions, to build collaborations across borders, and to imagine that a researcher could contribute meaningfully to European science and global health.

That realisation changed the way I thought about my work. I no longer wanted to design nanoparticles simply because they were scientifically interesting. I wanted to design nanosystems that could carry medicine more intelligently, protect drugs during transport, respond to biological environments, and ultimately help create personalised and regenerative therapies. That shift, from making materials to making meaningful therapeutic platforms, started with MSCA and has stayed with me ever since.

The impact of the MSCA fellowship on my career has been profound. It helped me build the foundation for an independent academic path, which later continued through my Junior Research Fellowship at Wolfson College, Cambridge, and then through my move to University College London. Today, as Chair Professor of Precision Nanosystems and Advanced Therapeutics at UCL, I am heading a UCL Centre for Advanced Materials in Clinical and Experimental Medicines at the interface of nanomedicine, biomaterials, regenerative medicine and advanced therapeutics. That trajectory did not happen in a straight line. It was shaped by fellowships, mentors, collaborators, failures, feedback and opportunities, and MSCA was the most important catalyst.

What MSCA gave me was more than a research project. It gave me a European scientific identity. It placed me in an environment where excellence was not defined by one discipline, one nationality, one idea or one career template. It encouraged mobility, interdisciplinarity and openness. It showed me that the best science often happens when people cross boundaries – between chemistry and medicine, academia and industry, engineering department and hospital, Europe and the wider world.

That philosophy has directly influenced how I now mentor young researchers and those who are coming to me as MSCA fellow. I often tell them that a fellowship is least limited to funding; it is a wider platform that gives you the permission to think bold and independently, to test your own ideas, to make mistakes, and to build a network that can outlast the original project.

This is one of the most powerful messages of MSCA – research careers are diverse and uncertain. Not every excellent researcher will become a professor, neither do they have to be, and not every major scientific impact will come from a laboratory alone. Some will build companies, some will move into clinical translation, some will shape policy, regulation, intellectual property, investment, manufacturing or patient-centred innovation, and some will move between these sectors several times. What does MSCA offer? It will prepare you as a researcher for this wider ecosystem because it values transferable skills, international exposure, collaboration and independence.

This is essential. Advanced therapeutics cannot progress through academic discovery alone. To move from an elegant nanoscale design to a therapy that benefits patients, we need clinicians, engineers, industry partners, manufacturing specialists, regulators, funders and entrepreneurs working together. In my opinion, the MSCA ethos ‘mobility-interdisciplinarity-career development and independence’ is perfectly aligned with this need. It trains researchers to develop and translate knowledge.

Looking back, I realise that the most important change MSCA created in me was psychological. It helped me moving from asking, ‘how good an experiment can I perform? to asking, ‘what problem am I uniquely positioned to solve?’ If I could speak to my younger self, I would say do not worry, enjoy your unconventional path. Your differences are not limitations, they are part of your scientific strength. Move across fields. Move across countries. Always listen to feedback. Be pro-active and build generous networks. Stay close to the problem you want to solve. And when an opportunity like MSCA comes, treat it not only as a fellowship, but as a launchpad.

In my opinion, do not simply use MSCA to fund a project – it can change yourself how you see the world of science and how you see yourself as a scientist. It taught me that the most exciting science happens when we cross boundaries between disciplines, countries, cultures academia and industry.

Which countries has MSCA taken you to?

I am originally from Barcelona, Spain. Through my MSCA journey, I have had the opportunity to live and work in several countries and research environments. During my MSCA Innovative Training Network (ITN), I moved to Oxford in the UK to undertake my PhD, and completed research placements in Albany (USA), and Delft (The Netherlands). Later, thanks to an MSCA Individual Fellowship, I returned to Barcelona, while also carrying out a secondment in Montpellier in France. MSCA not only enabled me to gain scientific expertise in different institutions but also allowed me to build an international network that continues to support and enrich my research today.

Which collaboration changed your career?

One of the most transformative collaborations of my career began during my MSCA ITN. The programme brought together 13 doctoral researchers working on different projects, creating a highly collaborative and interdisciplinary environment.

Through the network, I met Professor Angela Russell, one of the ITN leaders. This connection proved pivotal for my career. Immediately after my PhD, I joined her group in Oxford as a postdoctoral researcher and worked for OxStem, the start-up company she had recently co-founded. This experience provided me with crucial expertise in medicinal chemistry, drug discovery and cancer biology, skills that were key to help me secure an MSCA Individual Fellowship and laid the foundations for later establishing my own independent research group in Barcelona.

How has international working shaped your research?

International collaboration has profoundly shaped both my research and my approach to science. Diversity is one of the greatest strengths of research, and internationalisation plays a key role in fostering new ideas, perspectives and ways of solving scientific challenges.

During my MSCA ITN, I worked in a highly international environment, alongside researchers from many different countries, disciplines and cultural backgrounds. This experience taught me the value of bringing together diverse expertise and viewpoints to address complex scientific questions. Today, these lessons continue to influence how I lead my own research group. Our projects are built around international and interdisciplinary collaborations, and our team reflects this international spirit, currently bringing together researchers from Brazil, Croatia, Costa Rica and Finland. I strongly believe that scientific excellence thrives when people with different experiences and perspectives work together towards a common goal.

My MSCA Journey

Originally from Italy, I moved to the UK with my husband and our two young children – one just four months old and the other three. Leaving behind our family, friends and professional network was one of the most difficult decisions of my life, but it opened the door to opportunities that have shaped both my personal and professional life.

My MSCA Fellowship gave me the opportunity to join the Faculty of Engineering, where, as a psychologist, I initially felt quite intimidated. I was stepping into a completely different environment, working alongside engineers, clinicians, industry partners, and researchers from many different countries. Looking back, I now realise that these differences became one of the project's greatest strengths. Speaking different languages, coming from different disciplines, and bringing diverse cultural perspectives enriched both the research and the collaborations.

One of the aspects I valued most was working in close partnership with industry. At first, I was unsure about collaborating outside academia, but I quickly came to appreciate the practical perspective that industry partners bring. Their insights helped ensure that our research addressed real-world challenges and could have meaningful impact beyond the university.

The fellowship also gave me opportunities to undertake training in areas such as teaching, research leadership, communication, and public engagement. These experiences have continued to shape my academic career and have provided resources and skills that I still use today in developing my teaching and research.

Three things I learned: Diversity is a strength – different disciplines, cultures, and languages lead to more innovative and impactful research; industry and academia have different perspectives, but together they can create research that is both scientifically rigorous and practically relevant; and the biggest career decisions are not made on ambition alone – they are made possible by the support of those closest to you. I will always be grateful for my husband's encouragement in taking that leap.

I wish I hadn't been so scared. Moving to another country with two very young children felt overwhelming, and I often questioned whether I had made the right decision. Looking back, I realise that embracing uncertainty opened doors that I could never have imagined. I also wish I had known that being different – whether through my background, language, or discipline – would become one of my greatest strengths rather than something to worry about.

The best advice I received was not to be afraid to ask questions and learn from people outside your own discipline. Some of the most valuable ideas and collaborations come from conversations with people who think differently from you.

The thing I'm most proud of is having built an international career while staying true to my passion for improving people's lives through psychology. The MSCA Fellowship gave me the confidence to work across disciplines, build lasting collaborations with industry and international partners, and develop a research career that combines psychology, teaching, and research.