About ETH Grants
ETH Grants is a competitive funding programme for ETH Zurich researchers. It promotes world-class research with the potential to result in fundamental new knowledge or technologies and provides seed funding for new research and development directions at an early stage. In the focus are grant applications that step out from a PI's ongoing core research and involve highly creative and original as well as high-risk approaches.
The ETH Grants programme includes two distinct funding lines:
Single-PI Grants
ETH Grants for single Principal Investigators (PIs) are primarily intended to support outstanding and highly innovative doctoral projects in all disciplines at ETH Zurich. These grants can be awarded to a single ETH PI or applicants from the same research group. They provide seed funding for pioneering, step-out projects that have the potential for exciting new discoveries with high visibility and impact in the area of high-risk/high-reward research.
Collaborative Grants
Collaborative ETH Grants are intended to initiate interdisciplinary projects that involve Principal Investigators (PIs) from two to three ETH Zurich groups. These grants should integrate different disciplinary contributions and existing competencies into a novel, joint research approach that ventures into uncharted territory. They are meant to advance the innovation potential of ETH Zurich, with a clear scientific added value relative to the sum of the partners' contributions.
Projects that involve scientifically sound but relatively generic investigations, which would complement ongoing work in the PI's laboratory, will automatically be given low priority in both funding lines. Similarly, natural extensions of a PI’s ongoing research that would qualify for funding by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) will not be considered. Generic examples of suitable ETH Grant proposals can be found here.
PI's 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 (including both funding lines).
Employment must be guaranteed for the intended duration of the project.
More detailed information is given in the Download guidelines (PDF, 213 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 a Collaborative Grant 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.
Submission deadlines are 1 March and 1 September at 17:00 Swiss local time each year.
If a submission deadline falls on a weekend, it will be postponed to the following Monday, 17:00 Swiss local time.
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.
Check the detailed eligibility criteria, submission requirements and call documents and templates in the "SUBMIT" section.
ETH employees can access a protected page list of granted projects from the last three years.