Grants Office Newsletter June 2022
Dear Researchers of the University of Basel,
This edition of our Newsletter focuses on updates from Bern. The Swiss National Science Foundation has recently announced several changes both internally and with regards to upcoming Calls. We also provide you with the latest news from the Federal Council concerning the funding schemes offered to compensate for the specific Horizon Europe Calls that are currently inaccessible to participants based in Switzerland.
Last but not least, we inform you about the latest developments in Open Science, a survey regarding publishing standards as well as developments in Personalized Health research.
News from the SNSF
- The SNSF announced in March that they will merge the PRIMA and Eccellenza schemes into SNSF Professorial Fellowships. Applicants should have between 3 and 10 years (+ 3 months for this very first call) post-doctoral research experience. The Call is expected to open in November with a deadline for applications on 1st February 2023.
- The SNSF is introducing a new CV format, which will be required for the Project Funding deadline in October. The CV is created using the online tool and requires an up-to-date ORCID-ID. The SNSF is organizing a webinar on the 29th June to help you prepare the new CV: register
- As of the 1st July 2022 several changes to the SNSF implementation regulations will apply, including some changes to project budget regulations. In particular, the maximum budget for equipment is now set at CHF 100,000 and co-funding by the institution is no longer required.
Further Horizon Europe Measures
On the 4th May the Federal Council approved further funds for transitional measures to compensate Switzerland’s non-association to Horizon Europe. This will include a 2022 SNSF Advanced Grant Call (deadline 1st November) and a 2022 SNSF Swiss Postdoctoral Fellowship Call (deadline 1st December). The SNSF will publish further details in due course.
Furthermore, the Federal Council has reserved funds for Starting, Consolidator and Advanced Grant replacement Calls in 2023, if these ERC Individual Grants remain inaccessible to applicants with a Swiss Host Institute.
The Federal Council also announced complementary measures, to strengthen international collaboration and for a national quantum initiative. These will be launched in 2023 and will be implemented regardless of Switzerland’s status in Horizon Europe.
Last but not least, don’t forget that many Horizon Europe Calls remain open to Swiss participants and you will receive funding either directly from the EC or via the Swiss Transitional Measures.
Call for Proposals: Swiss Open Research Data Grants
To foster Open Research Data (ORD) practices, swissuniversities and the ETH Domain are jointly organizing the Swiss Open Research Data Grants. The program supports bottom-up initiatives for ORD practices across all disciplines and higher education institutions in Switzerland. Proposals can be submitted for “Explore”, “Establish” or “Contribute” projects.
To help you navigate your way through this novel program and funding scheme, the data stewards and members of the RDM network of the University of Basel are offering the following time slot to answer your questions:
- 23 June, 10-11h
Zoom link: https://unibas.zoom.us/j/62475443175
Quality Assurance in Scholarly Publishing
Recent transformations in academic publishing, have led to an increasing number of questions and discussions about business practices, pricing policies and quality assurance processes.
Quality assurance is not only important for maintaining academic publishing standards but also for decision-making in Open Access funding. The University Library Basel, together with EQUAP2, has created an online-survey to better understand recent trends in quality assurance and invites you to share your perspective as editor, reviewer or author.
If you have any questions please contact openaccess@unibas.ch or equap2@slub-dresden.de
Personalized Health Research
Following last year’s Call the Swiss Personalized Health Network (SPHN), together with Personalized Health and Related Technologies (PHRT), has selected four successful National Data Streams. For this year, the SPHN has launched a Demonstrator Call, deadline 31st August, to utilize existing SPHN infrastructures and identify remaining gaps.
Further news from the Personalized Health community, BiomedIT has launched a new website, with a comprehensive overview of the network, services and the tools that they offer. BiomedIT provides a secure IT network for the responsible processing of health-related data.
More Successes!
The Grants Office would like to congratulate:
- Ben Engel, Carolyn King, Jelena Klinovaja and Michael Nash for their ERC Consolidator Grants
- Peter Scheiffele and Stefan Willitsch for their SNSF Advanced Grants
- Silvia Arber for her SNSF Excellence grant in biology and medicine
- Timm Maier, Dritan Liko and the start-up Aukera Therapeutics for their Innosuisse project
- The PIs of the SPHN national data stream projects
- The PI’s of 26 new SNSF projects and two WEAVE/Lead Agency projects
- Christoph Handschin for his Sinergia project
- And the PIs of two new Horizon Europe collaborative projects; Gunther Meinlschmidt, Rainer Schäfert, Michael Mayr, Katrin Bopp and Andrea Meienberg for the project “Long Covid”; and Martin Wilks for the project “PARC”.