The SPR wishes all Unifr researchers a very happy New Year! Some of you may use this time to plan proposal submissions for third-party funding in 2025. To help you find inspiration about which funding opportunities might be suited to your research project ideas we have compiled a list of major open calls.  

If you have contacts to early career researchers based in Bulgaria, you might want to alert them to the SCIEX scheme that funds research stays of between six and 24 months in Switzerland for PhDs and Postdocs normally resident in Bulgaria (deadline 03.02.2025). For those working in the broad field of “Climate Change Adaptation and Local Resilience” a specific call is now encouraging research collaborations with Southeast Asia (closes 31.01.2025). A key deadline to keep in mind for researchers in all disciplines is of course the recurring SNSF Project Funding deadline (1.4.2025). Finally, the SNSF has announced a new UK-Swiss bilateral funding opportunity for clinical trials, which is set to open in April. For more information see here and here. Do get in touch with us if you wish to apply to any of these opportunities!

We are equally happy to support early career researchers in their applications for the SNSF Postdoc.Mobility opportunity, which closes on 03.02.2025. Unifr PhDs and their supervisors should also note that our internal Doc.Mobility opportunity, which funds research stays abroad for doctoral students, is once again open for application and will close on 1 March 2025. Furthermore, the Unifr internal research funding instruments of the Research Pool and the Centenary Research Fund have deadlines on 31 January and 1 March 2025, respectively.

Numerous Horizon Europe calls are currently open in the thematic clusters, particularly those connected to Energy transition and supply, cultural heritage and design of urban spaces. Do note that you can take part as “beneficiary” in the calls 2025 upwards and that your budget will count towards the overall project budget. More on this here. The complete list of open Horizon Europe calls can be found here. Don’t forget to check our “Open Calls” page regularly, and click on “subscribe” to add the various calls to your electronic calendar and never miss another deadline.

If none of the above-mentioned calls apply to you, you may wish to have a look at the Pivot-RP database for research funding opportunities. You can log in to Pivot-RP using your SWITCH-edu ID, and please note that you will get the best results when using English language keywords for your searches. Here are a few curated searches to get you started:

Opportunities for researchers from the Faculty of Humanities

Opportunities for researchers from the Faculty of Theology

Opportunities for researchers from the Faculty of Law

Opportunities for researchers from the Faculty of Management, Economics and Social Sciences

Opportunities for researchers from the Faculty of Science and Medicine, Science Section

Opportunities for researchers from the Faculty of Science and Medicine, Medicine Section

Do get in touch with any questions about the Open Calls mentioned or about the use of Pivot RP: research@unifr.ch.