ETH
Zurich Research Grants

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ETH Zurich promotes
world-class research that may result in fundamental new knowledge or
technologies via a co
mpetitive internal Research Grant Program. In the focus of
the funding program are grant applications that 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.

Grant applications
that involve scientifically sound but relatively routine investigations are
automatically assigned low priority.

ETH Zurich Research
Grants should not be the primary and certainly not the only source of research
funding for any ETH Zurich group. Rather, they should be a source of seed
funding for step-out projects with high visibility and impact.

ETH
Zurich Research Grants (“ETH Grants”)

These grants are
primarily intended to support highly innovative graduate student projects
involving a single ETH Principal Investigator or a small number of colleagues.
However, larger, collaborative and interdisciplinary proposals involving
several ETH Zurich groups and with a clear scientific added value with respect
to the combined contributions are also eligible for consideration.

The typical ETH
Grant will comprise one PhD student with funding for the salary and for
material costs. Requests for more than one doctoral student per Principal
Investigator need to be well justified. Post-doctoral research positions will
be funded only exceptionally. The maximum funding level for a project
requesting support for a single ETH Zurich research group is CHF 500’000 over 3
years. Funding for interdisciplinary endeavors involving two or more ETH
research groups is limited to a maximum of CHF 1’500’000 per project.

ETH Grants are not
meant to be a substitute for regular SNSF grants but should complement SNSF
funding in the area of high-risk / high reward research. Therefore, ETH Grant
Principal Investigators are, in general, required to have at least one active
SNSF grant or to hold one other substantial, peer-reviewed, active external grant,
e.g., from the EU (for exceptions, see guidelines (PDF, 54 KB)). A Principal
Investigator must also not submit more than one ETH Grant application per call.

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Requirements

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Detailed information
on requirements for ETH Grant Applications is given in the guidelines.
Applications not complying with the guidelines (PDF, 54 KB) will be
rejected on formal grounds.

Submission procedure

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Applications must be
submitted electronically in pdf-format using the dedicated on-line system. Applicants must use the provided templates
and follow the naming conventions for the individual documents. More
information on the submission procedure is provided here.

Deadlines

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Submission deadlines
are March 1 and September 1 at 11.59 p.m. CET.

When to expect a decision

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Notification of
decisions made by the Vice President Research will normally be sent to the
Principal Investigator within approximately 4 months of the submission
deadline.

Personnel costs (valid 2016)

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For PhD students and
postdoctoral researchers, please use the following standard rates (percentage
of employment: 100):

PhD students

first
year: kCHF 53.4
second
year: kCHF 55.1
third
year: kCHF 56.9
Total:
kCHF 165.4

Postdoctoral
researchers

first
year: kCHF 98.4
second
year: kCHF 103.3
Total:
kCHF 201.7

The rates include
approx. 13.6 % and 14.0 % social security overhead for PhD students and postdocs,
respectively. For other participants, please obtain from the personnel
department (Personalabteilung) a salary estimate 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.