Competitive foundations are not donors. They publish calls, they select competitively, and most fund a defined topic rather than an open field.

USI offers to our academic community Research Professional, a database of research funding opportunities worldwide.
Filter by discipline, career stage and funding type. Set an alert to receive matching calls by email. Creating an account only takes a couple of minutes from the USI network.

Contact us as soon as possible to identify a foundation matching your profile, to check your eligibility and to understand the call regulations, and for proposal and budget review, institutional support letters and mock interview coaching where the call includes a pitch.

Your salary covered while you build the record for a professorship, in any discipline and with no thematic restriction. 4-5 grants a year, and selection is as demanding as for an SNSF career grant, though the application itself is short.

Advanced postdocs aiming at a professorship, or assistant professors at the start of their tenure. Under 35, with a demonstrable link to Switzerland or work connected to it, already publishing, with min. 20% of your time on the project.

Your salary and social charges only, on the SNSF scale, usually CHF 90-120K a year. Materials, personnel, infrastructure, publications, conferences and overhead are not covered.

Two rounds a year, end of April and end of October. The Board of Trustees decides within a month. Online form only, no informal enquiries. Parallel applications to other funders are allowed, double funding is not.

Does your project sit between disciplines, or outside the mainstream of your own? That is what this fellowship is for: up to 10 are awarded worldwide each year, across all fields.

PhD obtained max. 5 years before the deadline, no faculty position yet. Any field, engineering to the humanities. You choose the host institution, anywhere in the world. Parental leave or illness can extend the 5-year window by up to a year, on official confirmation sent in advance.

Up to CHF 600K over 5 years for salary, personnel, equipment, travel and consumables. A pioneer phase of 2.5 years, then an exploitation phase of 2.5 years after a review and site visit.

Portal opens October 2026, interviews in Zurich around June 2027, start between October and December 2027. You can take up a professorship after year one without losing the fellowship.

A selection of foundation calls opening or closing over the next months, across all disciplines. Deadlines are annual unless stated otherwise.

Max. CHF 80K for 12 months in medicine and medically oriented biology or biochemistry conducted in Switzerland. Research Project Grants go to senior PIs; the Young Investigator Grant targets researchers under 8 years post-PhD. Acceptance rate is 5-10%.

Research, publications, exhibitions, films and installations, up to USD 20K with no fixed project duration. Stage 1 is a short inquiry form; shortlisted applicants submit a full proposal in February 2027. US-based, but sometimes open to Swiss applicants.

Public understanding of science, plus workshops and conferences. The focus should be the scientific method itself and what it implies, not the dissemination of the latest results. Typically CHF 10K or CHF 50K. No overheads, no top-ups to SNSF or ERC.

Seed or completion funding for individual researchers, typically doctoral students and postdocs, in applied psychology: education, work and organisations, media, mobility and safety, health and counselling. Max. CHF 25K for up to 12 months. Clinical psychology is excluded.

Velux Stiftung runs four programmes on separate deadlines: healthy ageing, ophthalmology, forestry and daylight research. Healthy ageing has reopened with a new focus on the functional ability and intrinsic capacity of older people, on a bio-psycho-social rather than purely medical basis.

The Lugano foundation awards 7 fellowships a year, EUR 32K each, covering salary and mobility for 12 months, in dermatology, endocrinology, fertility and urology, orthopedics and pain medicine, and healthy ageing. For PhD students, postdocs and medical residents under 40.

Project grants up to CHF 375K over 48 months for established researchers at a Swiss institution, plus international fellowships for postdocs moving abroad. Basic, clinical, epidemiological and psychosocial cancer research. The round opens end of November.

Up to 12 fellowships a year, CHF 150K plus CHF 15K indirect costs over three years, for early- and mid-career researchers working on how children and youth learn and develop. Education sciences, psychology, economics, sociology, computer science and linguistics qualify.

These foundations accept applications throughout the year. There is no deadline to plan around, but most of them expect contact well before you submit.

Up to CHF 50K for up to 12 months, simplified procedure, no deadline, decision in roughly 30 days. ICT must be at the core: foundational research, applications in a new context, research on ICT and society, or ICT education.

Send a short abstract to idee@grstiftung.ch at any time to be invited to submit a full proposal. Scientainment funds science communication formats that combine science and entertainment and reach audiences beyond the usual academic public. Scaling potential is decisive.

Education, participation, mutual understanding and the environment, with digitalisation as a cross-cutting theme. No deadlines: send a short project sketch at any time. The board decides four to eight times a year depending on the amount requested.

Education and research with a Swiss link, all disciplines, institutions only. Applications must arrive five months before the project starts. Watch the autumn switch: post until 14 November, online only from 1 December, nothing accepted 15-30 November.

Max. CHF 400K over 3 years for young group leaders in the medical sciences, with no thematic restriction within that field. The Lugano based funder should reopen the call in January 2027 under a new name, with a March deadline.