Further Funding Opportunities

Open Calls:

Democratizing large-scale AI for the benefit of society: Open calls for disruptive ideas

The external page Swiss AI Initiative is distributing 10-20 million GPU hours in 2025 for disruptive research projects through open calls. The call is open to research projects that aim to contribute to advances in AI fundamentals or impactful applications of AI. Researchers outside of Switzerland are encouraged to apply if they team up with at least one of the initiative’s PIs and aim to create novel open science artifacts that benefit the Swiss, European or global ecosystem and societal context.

Proposal deadlines & more information:

external page Open call for small projects (~50k GPU hours): rolling reviews

"Germaine de Staël": funding for cooperation with France

The Germaine de Staël programme promotes French-Swiss research partnerships. It is open to all research disciplines and covers travel expenses and costs for short stays with the partner team in France, with a maximum budget of CHF 4,500 per year.

The application phase is open until external page 15 May 2025.

International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU): Early-Career Collaboration Awards 2025-2026

IARU’s Early-Career Collaboration Award Scheme helps early-career academics by providing funds to meet the costs of a short-term research visit at another IARU university, with a maximum budget of USD 5,000.

The application phase is open until 30 June 2025.

Swiss Data Science Center (SDSC) - National Calls for Projects

The Swiss Data Science Center (SDSC) is launching its first national calls for collaborative projects starting in 2025. The call procedure enables SDSC to identify and engage in impactful projects and collaborations, and is a vital instrument to allocate its resources in a fair manner. Calls for collaborative projects are announced on a national level and focus on the following areas:

The 2024 Call for Collaborative Research Data Science Projects will offer to contribute in-kind expertise in statistical data science, machine learning and AI to research projects in different application domains.
The 2024 Call for End-User Innovation Projects aims to ensure that novelty developed in an academic or research context achieves its full potential in end-user contexts, serving a community or society at large, e.g. public institutions, industrial and/or economic stakeholders.
The 2024 Call for Collaborative Open Research Data (ORD) Infrastructure Projects aims to advance the Swiss National ORD Strategy by fostering collaborative development of sustainable and reusable data and software infrastructure that empowers open research practices.

The deadline for pre-proposals is on 15 July 2025.

Further information, documents and the timeline can be found on the external page SDSC website.

Leading Houses: Calls for smaller regional pilot projects

Mandated by Switzerland’s State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI), selected Swiss institutes of higher education manage various cooperation instruments for seed funding and innovative pilot projects as part of the bilateral programmes with different world regions. Please visit the dedicated websites for information on current activities and open calls for proposals:

external page North Africa and Middle East: University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland (HES-SO)
external page Sub-Saharan Africa: Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH) in collaboration with the University of Basel
external page Latin America: University of St Gallen (HSG)
external page Asia / Pacific region: University of Zurich (UZH)
external page South Asia and Iran: Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW)

“Foster. Lead. Promote.” programme

Who can apply?

Female doctoral students, postdoctoral researchers and other young female scientists working at an institution in the ETH domain. The programme serves the development of academic careers and is not tied to research projects.

Programme details, registration and important dates

The programme includes courses in the areas of leadership, career development and soft skills, as well as coaching and mentoring. Further information and registration details can be found at external page Foster. Lead. Promote.

Opportunity finders (for ETH researchers)

Research Professional

There are more options for funding than you might think. Projects, fellowships, travels, equipment - you name it. Check out external page Research Professional, a comprehensive database of funding schemes that is freely accessible to ETH researchers (on campus or via VPN).

Research+

The central platform of external page research.swiss aims to facilitate collaboration in research and innovation by providing researchers, higher education institutions and innovators with a unique overview of the most important funding instruments, calls for joint research projects and mobility programmes.

Foundations

Check the external page directory of foundations