FCT Call for PhD Studentships 2021 received 3381 applications

The 2021 Call for PhD Research Studentships from the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), which ran from March 1 to 31, received a total of 3381 applications. The Call will award 1,450 Studentships for funding.

The majority of applicants (82.3%) intend to study at national host institutions, followed by mixed study at national and foreign host institutions (15.3%) and, to a lesser extent, full study abroad (2.4%).

Foreign candidates represent 30% and come from a total of 71 countries. The countries with the most Call candidates are Brazil (48.2%), Italy (9.2%), Iran (7.7%), Spain (4.2%) and India (2.6%).

By gender, women represent 56% of the candidates and men 44%. 

The distribution of candidates by major scientific area is as follows: Social Sciences - 23.7%, Engineering and Technology Sciences - 23.5%, Humanities 17.4%, Medical and Health Sciences - 11.5%, Natural Sciences - 11.2%, Exact Sciences 7.5% and Agricultural Sciences 5.3% (see Table 1).

The applications submitted will be assessed by 36 Evaluation Panels. The panels with the highest number of applications are: Clinical Medicine and Health Sciences - 5.3%, Arts - 4.9% and Computer Sciences and Informatics - 4.8%.

The FCT's Doctoral Research Studentships are competitively awarded grants to support advanced training in all areas of knowledge to obtain the academic degree of Doctor. These Studentships allow doctoral students to devote themselves exclusively to their research, thus contributing to the country's scientific and technological development. FCT currently supports around 6,000 doctoral research Studentships .

Table1

Distribution of applications submitted by main scientific area and gender of applicants

Annex: Statistical report of the Call application process