Written by Emerson Bryan Dilla (Doctoral Candidate) - KU Leuven, GET-IN MSCA Consortium - EC HORIZON–MSCA-2023-DN Grant Agreement No. 10111988

 

"A scientific legacy is not only what is discovered. It is also what becomes possible for others.”

 

More than scientific brilliance

 

“Marie Curie did not only break barriers. She changed the boundaries of who could belong in science.”

 

Curie’s story endures because of the world in which she accomplished her work. She built her scientific career in an academic system that sharply limited women’s access to education, authority, and recognition [3,5]. Despite these barriers, she became the first woman to hold a professorship at the University of Paris (the Sorbonne) and emerged as one of the most powerful symbols of scientific excellence achieved under exclusion [3,6]. That is why her legacy still resonates so strongly today, especially for women in science, because her story is not only about brilliance. It is a story of access fought for, endurance sustained, and legitimacy earned. It shows how profoundly science can advance when talent persists in institutions that were never designed to welcome it. Her influence reached well beyond her own scientific achievements. Later accounts of Curie’s broader impact indicate that her laboratory and the example she set, became a durable model for generations of women in science, making her legacy not only personal but institutional and generational [6]. In that sense, what she initiated includes more than mere discoveries, but includes a scientific culture made more visible, accessible, and possible for the next generation [4,6].

 

A legacy carried by institutions

 

“The strongest scientific legacies are the ones that outlive the individual.”

 

Marie Curie’s legacy was never limited to laboratory bench. Her work helped shape radiology and modern medicine, and during World War I she not only endorsed mobile radiography units that brought X-ray diagnostics directly to wounded soldiers and actively operated them herself [2,3]. That matters because it reveals something essential about her vision of science: rigorous, ambitious, and connected to human need [3,4]. In many ways, that model feels strikingly modern. Today’s most complex problems are rarely solved within a single discipline, institution, or sector. Instead, they require collaboration, mobility, and long-term support for work that is technically demanding and strategically important. That is exactly why the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) matter. Since 1996, the program has grown into the European Union’s flagship scheme for researcher training, mobility, and career development, supporting more than 150,000 researchers over three decades [7,8]. It was built on the idea that scientific progress depends not only on ideas, but on people, and the environments that allow ambitious research to take root and thrive [7,8].

 

Women in science

 

“Representation matters most when it changes who believes they belong.”

 

A research system can celebrate brilliance while still leaving access uneven. Any reflection on Curie’s legacy should also acknowledge what remains unfinished. For women in science especially, Curie’s story still matters because it demonstrates that excellence and inclusion are not opposing values [3,4,6]. Visibility shapes ambition. When institutions support talented researchers across borders, sectors, and backgrounds, they do more than widen participation: they expand the range of questions science can ask, and the range of people trusted to answer them. That is part of what provides the MSCA their deeper significance. MSCA has linked its mission to advancing inclusion in research careers and reports that women now make up for 44% of supported researchers in the program [11]. That does not mean the work is complete, but it does underscore that scientific excellence and broader participation can advance together, as they should [11].

 

From Curie to GET-IN

 

“If Curie represents the spirit of discovery, MSCA represents the system that allows discovery to travel.”

 

One of the clearest ways to see that continuity is through the kinds of research networks MSCA supports today. Modern science increasingly relies on researchers who can move across borders, work at the intersection of academia and industry, and connect fundamental discovery with real-world application [7,8].

 

Gene therapy is a particularly fitting example of this model. At the forefront of modern medical science, its promise is profound: not simply to manage symptoms, but to address disease at the level of its underlying genetic cause. Yet, delivering on that promise requires multiple paralleled advances, from scalable and cost-effective viral vector production and biomanufacturing, to genome editing, digital simulation, and humanized preclinical models such as organ-on-chip systems [9,10,12]. That is what makes the GEne Therapy INnovation Training Network (GET-IN) such a strong example of the MSCA mission in practice (https://www.get-in.org/).​​​​​​​​​​​