Grants Office Newsletter September 2024

Dear Researchers of the University of Basel,

We hope you all started the new academic year well.

At the beginning of July, some positive developments in the political discussions between Switzerland and the EU, brought some good news for those wishing to apply for an ERC Grant. Sadly, this news came too late for this year’s Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship Call but once again the Swiss National Science Foundation is filling the gap by launching their own Postdoctoral Fellowship Call.

For those of you who want to brush-up or expand your knowledge about SNSF funding schemes, together with Innosuisse the SNSF is running a series of webinars in October and November. Each session covers different funding schemes and gives you the opportunity to ask questions to the SNSF project officers.

This issue of our newsletter reports on some excellent successes and as usual highlights a few upcoming funding opportunities.

Last but not least we would like to introduce a new colleague.

The Grants Office Team

Eve Silfverberg, Gillianne Bowman, Aleksandra Grzegorczyk, , Luca Wacker & Julia Wyss

Some good news regarding Horizon Europe, researchers with a Swiss host institution are eligible to apply to the following Calls:

• ERC Starting Grant Call 2025: deadline on 15 October, for applicants with 2-7 years post PhD experience
• ERC Synergy Grant Call 2025: deadline on 6 November, for a team of up to four PIs regardless of their career stage
• ERC Consolidator Grant Call 2025: deadline 14 January 2025, for applicants with 7-12 years post PhD experience

Please get in touch with the us, if you are planning to apply to one of these calls. Together with our colleagues from Euresearch we are offering support and advise to applicants.

Last year we celebrated the record of 13 successful applicants in the Ambizione Call. This year, we are very happy to announce that this record has been broken. We congratulate our 14 new Ambizione grantees and wish them all the best for their independent research project!

The deadline for the upcoming Ambizione call is 1^st November. Reach out to us for further support.

Following the announcement that researchers in Switzerland will be eligible for the ERC Starting Grant, the SNSF rapidly announced their plans for the 2025 Call for researchers at this stage of their career. The SNSF Starting Grant Call 2025 with deadline on 15 January 2025, will focus on support for researchers aiming to establish their own research group, in a similar way to the previous Eccellenza and Prima schemes.

Applicants are eligible if they have 2-8 years post PhD experience and have a link to Switzerland (new). Furthermore, applicants who already hold an assistant professorship AND have already received significant third-party funding, will not be eligible. Further details can be found in the call document.  

Please get in touch with us if you have any questions. We are happy to support you and organize the required host institution support letter. Applicants are invited to join our online information event on 7 November, 17.00-18.00. Please register by sending an email to grants@unibas.ch.

This year the SNSF continues to offer a call for Postdoctoral Fellowships for researchers from all disciplines and topics who were interested in applying for a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship. Applicants should have no more than eight years of postdoctoral experience and may not have worked (or lived) in Switzerland for more than 12 months in the 3 years prior to the deadline. Under the SPF scheme you can apply for a 12-24 month postdoc project.

The deadline for submission is 2 December 2024. Detailed information may be found on the SNSF website.

Do you need additional funds for an ongoing research project? Do you plan a short pilot project? Do you plan a longer research or training stay? Are you looking for other funding beyond the major and known funding opportunities?

Why not look for private funding instead or in addition? We present you an overview of private funding organizations in Basel, many exclusively for researchers at the University of Basel.

Read more.

We are pleased to announce that Aleksandra Grzegorczyk joined the Grants Office in August.

Aleksandra has 10 years’ experience in proposal writing, project management and administration. She has a master’s degrees in social sciences.

We are pleased to welcome Aleksandra to the team and wish her a good start.

The Grants Office would like to congratulate:

• The fourteen recipients of an Ambizione Grant
• David Hauser and Heinz Läubli for their Innosuisse grants
• Daniel Häussinger, Matthias Wymann, Mohamed Bentires-Alj, Douglas Häggström and Georg Rauter for their Horizon Europe MSCA-DN projects
• Mira Katan for the Horizon Europe project UMBRELLA
• Aurelien Lucchi and Moritz von Brescius for their SNSF Consolidator Grants
• Philipp Treutlein and Patrick Maletinsky for their projects from the Swiss Quantum Call 2024
• Richard Neher for swissuniversities ORD grant
• Juan Jauregui-Lozano for a HFSP Postdoctoral Fellowship
• Timm Maier and Frithjof Benjamin Schenk for their Swiss Ukraine Joint Grant Programme projects
• Carlos Eduardo de Bento Flores and Christoph Dehio for their Alternatives Research and Development Foundation project
• James Lawrence Zimmermann Merron for a Leading House Africa funded project

Check out Research Professional for more national and international Calls.