Grants Office Newsletter June 2025

Dear Researchers of the University of Basel,

Just as you are getting ready to pack your suitcase for your summer adventure, we take a little look-back to some successes from the spring and forward to some deadlines in autumn.

First and foremost, we congratulate our new ERC Advanced Grantees and look forward to the next deadlines with full Swiss participation. The Advanced Grant 2025 deadline in August follows in the format we have been used to in the past. However, as of the ERC Starting Grant Call in October, the ERC will make some changes to the proposal format and in 2027 extend the eligibility windows for Starting and Consolidator Grants. If you missed our event on the 5^th June where we informed about this, an update can be found below.

Following the positive developments regarding Swiss participation in Horizon Europe, the SNSF will not be launching any transitional measure Calls this year. We explain what this means in detail, in particular for the Post-Doctoral Fellowships.

Last but not least we inform you about the next phase for collaboration within the region-specific Leading Houses.

We wish you an interesting read and a well-deserved summer break.

The Grants Office Team

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

Last week the ERC announced the results of the 2024 ERC Advanced Grant Call. The Grants Office would like to congratulate Prof Alex Schier, Prof Thomas Ward and Prof Oliver Wenger, who were all awarded one of these prestigious Grants for their innovative projects.

Although competition is tough, our researchers continually show that ERC Grants are a reachable aim. Together with our colleagues from the Euresearch network we are here to support you. The next ERC Advanced Grant deadline is on 28^th August.

Please contact us if you plan to apply and enter your project in the Grants Tool by 15^th August at the latest.  

The ERC Starting Grant call follows soon after, with the Call opening at the beginning of July and the deadline in mid-October. Please contact us if you intend to apply.

The State Secretariate for Education, Research and Innovation has approved funding for the 2025-2028 phase of the Swiss Leading Houses. The Swiss TPH – in collaboration with the University of Basel – continues to run the Swiss Leading House Africa. New calls for seed funding, innovative pilot projects and scientific exchange with partners in the relevant countries will soon be launched for this as well as the Latin America, MENA, South Asia and Asia Pacific Leading Houses.

Overview of calls

Together with the Responsible Digital Society Network at the University of Basel, we organized a Horizon Europe event on 5^th of June. Participants learned from Prof Florina Ciorba about what it means to be in a Horizon Europe consortium and from Prof Heiko Schuldt how evaluators work. In the afternoon, we heard about forthcoming changes to the ERC Schemes and followed with a cross-disciplinary panel discussion about ERC Grants with Prof Ben Engel, Prof Jörg Rieskamp and Prof Christian Schönenberger. For more information on upcoming Horizon Europe collaborative and ERC calls, visit our overview page. If you are applying to any of the open calls or have any questions, please reach out to grants@unibas.ch.

With the new opportunities within the Horizon Europe Programs ERC and MSCA the transitional measures in Switzerland have been discontinued. In particular, the Swiss Postdoctoral Fellowship, as replacement for the MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship, has ended. Furthermore, it is no longer possible to host MSCA Global Fellows for their outgoing phase in third countries. The good news is, that researchers can again apply for the MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship and with a host institution in Switzerland. The next deadline is September 10, 2025.

As of 2025 the SNSF Starting Grant returns to a traditional SNF career funding scheme, with the relevant eligibility restrictions. The SNSF has already announced that the next deadline will be May 5, 2026.

We congratulate Alain Amstutz and his collaborators Mamaswatsi Kopeka (University of Washington) and Meri Hyöky (The Hub) for the best Scientific Image 2025 awarded by the SNSF. The Hair Salon Project explores hair salons in Lesotho as safe, accessible and trusted community spaces to promote sexual and reproductive health. Women in Lesotho are especially affected by HIV and sexual and reproductive health challenges and the project explores new ways of reaching them. The awarded picture is part of a photo story to create more accessible content to lay audiences. The team also experiments with short films and social media videos, to reach a larger audience.

The Grants Office would like to congratulate:

• Our 18 grantees for SNSF projects
• Patrick Badertscher and Christopher Böhlke for their IICT projects
• The 5 new SNSF Swiss Postdoctoral Fellows
• Andreas Kuhlmann for an Innosuisse project
• Kadjita Asumbisa for a HFSP Fellowship
• David Beriashvili and Elgin Korkmazhan for their EMBO Fellowships
• Valiantsin Darafeyeu for a Schweizerische Hirnliga project
• Jean Pieters for a LEO Foundation project
• Christoph Handschin for a project from fondation Suisse de recherche sur les maladies musculaires
• Anissa Kempf for a Novartis Foundation for Medical Biological Research project
• Dennis Gillingham for a Cerebrum DAO grant
• Immanuel Plangger for a Österreichischer Wissenschaftsfonds stipend
• Lucas Boeck for a Eurostars project
• Sandro Stoffel and Matthias Schwenkglenks for their project funded by Philas Foundation
• Dominik Zumbühl for an Interreg project

Check out Research Professional for more national and international Calls.