ETH Zurich Research Grants
ETH Grants is a competitive internal funding programme to promote world-class research with the potential to result in fundamental new knowledge or technologies and exciting discoveries. The programme provides seed funding for new research and development directions at an early stage. In the focus are grant applications that venture into uncharted territory and involve highly creative and original as well as high-risk approaches with the potential for exciting new discoveries in all disciplines represented at the ETH Zurich. See the list of protected pagesupported projects for examples.
The programme includes two distinct funding lines:
Deadline & submission
Submission deadlines each year: 1 March and 1 September, 17:00 Swiss local time
ETH Zurich grant application system: eResearch
The call is usually open in the system about one month before the deadline.
Outside office hours, no support can be provided for problems with electronic submission.
Principal Investigators are, in general, required to have at least one active SNSF grant or to hold one other substantial, peer-reviewed, external grant, e.g., from the EU. Exceptions are possible e.g. in the case of professors who have newly arrived at ETH Zurich.
A PI must also not submit more than one application per call. Employment must be guaranteed for the intended duration of the project.
More detailed information is given in the Downloadguidelines (PDF, 195 KB). Non-compliant applications will be rejected on formal grounds.
The typical Single-PI Grant covers the salary and material costs for one doctoral student for up to four years, including travel for the doctoral student to a scientific congress. Post-doctoral research positions are generally not foreseen and will be funded only exceptionally, only for a maximum duration of one year and only in addition to the doctoral student.
Funding for Collaborative Grants usually includes the salary for generally one doctoral student per PI and material costs for up to four years, and, if well justified, can include funding for a postdoctoral researcher for a maximum of two years. Proposals with, for example, only one joint doctoral student between 2 PIs are also welcome.
Personnel costs
For doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers, please use the following standard rates (valid 2024, employment at 100%):
The rates include 14.5 % and 15.0 % social security overhead for doctoral students and postdocs, respectively. For other participants, please obtain a salary estimate from Human Resources and enclose the calculation sheets in the proposal.
Successful projects will be awarded a lump sum based on salary costs valid at the time of approval. Adjustments of salary scales might be made in adherence to the general ETH Domain remuneration policy as defined by the ETH Board. Any extra costs associated with salary scale adjustments effected during the project funding period must be borne by the applicants.
Applications must be submitted electronically in pdf format using the dedicated ETH grant application system "eResearch". Applicants must use the provided templates and follow the naming conventions for the individual documents.
Submission deadlines are 1 March and 1 September at 17:00 Swiss local time each year.
Each application is subjected to an external peer review and is evaluated according to homogenous quality standards by the ETH Zurich Research Commission, which then issues a funding recommendation to the Vice President Research.
PIs will be notified about the funding decision within approximately four months after the application deadline.
Supported projects
ETH employees can access a protected pagelist of granted projects from the last three years.
Should you wish to access your previous applications in the old application system, you can do so via this link. However, please note that new proposals should not be submitted on the former platform. Only submissions on eResearch can be considered for evaluation.
Further information
For more details on the ETH Zurich Research Grants, please refer to the Downloadguidelines (PDF, 195 KB). For further information, please contact .
Contact
ETH Zurich
Grants Office
Rämistrasse 101
8092
Zürich
ETH Zurich
Grants Office
Rämistrasse 101
8092
Zürich
