The MSCA Industrial Doctoral Network on Digital Finance, funded by Horizon Europe, brings together top universities, research centres, and companies to train a cohort of PhD students in new financial technologies while designing a new PhD programme to prepare and boost European Competitiveness in Digital Finance. The project was initiated by Dr. Jörg Osterrieder (UT) as Principal Investigator, taking on the role of Coordinator and chair, Dr. Branka Hadji Misheva (Bern University of Applied Sciences) as Co-Chair and Dr. Marcos Machado (UT), with Dr. Frédérik Sinan Bernard (UT) later joining the team to help manage the project and its research.
Alongside are many other key people from industry and academia, who are leading or playing an active role in the technical work packages, but also in the governance of the project. The initiative is thus designed to bridge the gap between academia and industry, with inputs from both sides in the individual research projects, ensuring PhD candidates are being trained and become well-equipped with both theoretical knowledge and operationally practical skills that can be transferable and that are relevant to a rapidly evolving digital finance landscape.
A growing network
The network has undergone significant expansion, now comprising over 140 researchers, and is a collaboration between 8 leading European universities, 3 large and internationally renowned research centres, 6 banks & fintechs, and 2 intergovernmental agencies (European Central Bank & Bank for International Settlements). Thanks to the quality of the project, new academic and industry actors have joined and are still requesting to join the project, to contribute in kind as “network partners” that will help ensure the sustainability of the project and the PhD programme.
The project started in January 2024, with 17 Doctoral Candidates starting their research in 2025, grouped around 5 major research packages:
- Towards a European financial data space
- Artificial intelligence for financial markets
- Towards explainable and fair AI-generated decisions
- Driving digital innovations with Blockchain applications
- Sustainability of Digital Finance
As both a beneficiary partner and the coordinator of the project, the UT continues to play its central role. In particular, next week from May 19th until May 23rd, the UT will host the Technical Training Week for the Doctoral Candidates (DCs) as part of ongoing training and research. Representing the UT's Doctoral Candidates funded by the MSCA DIGITAL are Mathis Jander, Manuele Massei, Armin Sadhigi and Mohamed Faid.
Midterm meeting
On Wednesday, May 21, the Midterm Meeting will gather all Doctoral candidates, beneficiaries and associated partners of the network, alongside the EU Project officer to represent the sponsor. The Midterm Meeting marks a major milestone in the project's existence, where the progress of the project will be presented before our network and the project officer from the European Research Executive Agency (REA). Reporting on recruitment, milestones, deliverables, among other topics, will allow the network to reflect on its progress and incorporate feedback and inputs for the rest of the project.
The Technical Training Week is part of the main events of our training program. The doctoral training (Work Package 6, led by Dr. Wouter van Heeswijk from UT) supports the primary goal of MSCA Digital Finance to foster the development of next-generation researchers and professionals and enable them to contribute significantly to the digital finance sector. The Technical Training Week will include updates on the DC’s progress, talks from industry partners and technical academic work sessions. Research talks focused on security, ethics in AI will also be an integral part of the training week.
Join or learn more
As such, anyone interested in learning more about digital finance is welcome to join the talks, notably on Tuesday and Thursday. If you want to know more about the MSCA Digital Finance project in general, please visit our website digital-finance-msca.com.
If you are curious, want to join the talks and meet us and our partners, feel free to check the agenda of the event here to tailor your time to the topics that interest you, and register here.
We are continuously looking to improve our network, collaboration, and research. Please reach out to us directly through our PI and project chair, Dr Jörg Osterrieder or through our project manager, Dr Frédérik Sinan Bernard
