Grants Office Newsletter December 2023

Dear Researchers of the University of Basel,

As 2023 comes to an end, many of you can look back on a successful year with regards to third-party funding. In October almost 40 research groups received the good news that their SNSF project had been successfully evaluated and in November we were able to congratulate six new SNSF Starting Grantees.

Last Friday the Swiss Federal Council published a draft negotiation mandate for the future relationship with the European Union (EU) and there were some positive announcements regarding Horizon Europe.

On a more personal note, we would like to congratulate our Vice President, Prof Torsten Schwede, for his appointment as President of the SNSF Research Council as of 2025. The SNSF took important decisions about the overall governance in its GO24 restructuring project this year and now enters the implementation stage. Nominating a new president is an important step towards ensuring a smooth transition to the next phase. Read more about these developments and an outlook for 2024, in our interview with Torsten.

We wish you and your families an enjoyable and relaxing winter break, and look forward to a successful and and most importantly peaceful 2024.

The Grants Office Team

Eve Silfverberg, Gillianne Bowman, Caroline Peneff, Luca Wacker & Julia Wyss

On Friday,  the Swiss Federal Council published a draft negotiation mandate for the future relationship with the European Union (EU).  National consultations will begin with the Swiss parliament and Cantons but if all goes well on the Swiss side and the EU adopts its own mandate, official negotiations regarding the “package approach” can begin, hopefully in March or April of 2024. In parallel, the European Commission has invited Switzerland to begin exploratory talks on Switzerland's association to EU programmes in the fields of education, research and innovation including Horizon Europe and Erasmus+. At present, there are no changes to the status of Switzerland in Horizon Europe but on Friday a transitional arrangement for Swiss participation in the ERC 2024 Advanced Grant Call was announced. Although this is under the condition that official negotiations on the overall “package” and association to Horizon Europe begin before the Advanced Grant deadline in August, this is an extremely positive sign.  In the meantime, the Swiss government continues to provide financial support for research projects, via direct funding for collaborative projects and the transitional measures. In addition to the open Calls under the transitional measures, the Swiss Federal Council has also approved funds for a SNSF Consolidator Call in 2024, further information on that is expected in the new year.

The Vice President for Research recently announced the launch of the new research portal UNIverse. This replaces the former research databases, and allows researchers and departments to organize and collate information related to their research activities such as scientific publications, research projects and grants. The UNIverse team have created a website with an overview of the features and helpful “how to” videos as well as a help page with detailed instructions and dates of training events. Until the end of the year, the UNIverse Team host an informal zoom session every Thursday, where you can drop by and ask questions. As with the Research Database all successful third-party Grants will be transferred from the Grants Tool to UNIverse, where you can check and update any data before publishing it in the online database. The Public interface of UNIverse will be launched in 2024, in the meantime it’s important to continue to record all third-party funded projects in the Grants Tool, not only for the internal approval and financial management but also the automatic transfer to UNIverse.

As announced in the UniNews, our Vice President, Prof Torsten Schwede has been nominated as President of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Research Council from 2025.

We asked him about the significance of the recent and upcoming changes to the SNSF and what this means for us here in Basel.

READ MORE

The SNSF Scientific Image Competition encourages researchers working in Switzerland to present their works to the public and the media. Photographs, images and videos will be rated in terms of their aesthetic quality and their ability to inspire and amaze, to convey or illustrate knowledge, to tell a human story or to let us discover a new universe.

With a little bit of luck, your picture will be the header of a Grants Office Newsletter.

Submissions are accepted until 31 January.

The Grants Office would like to congratulate:

• The PIs of 34 new SNSF Projects
• Five new WEAVE/Lead Agency projects
• Dominik Fleitmann, Jörg Huwyler and Botond Roska for their new Sinergia projects
• Matthias Eggel, Alfred Früh and Nico Müller for their NRP 79 projects
• Roderick Lim for his COST project
• 11 new SPARK Grantees
• 6 new SNSF Starting Grantees: Jean-Christoph Beltra, Jonathan de Roo, Karen Dixon, Nemiah Ladd, Marie Muschalek and Julie Ren
• Martino Poggio for his new R'EQUIP grant
• Laurent Goetschel for his SOR4D project
• Madleina Manetsch and Tobias Derfuss for their ERA-NET projects
• Christian Nsanzabane for his SPIRIT project
• Dana Landau for her SNIS project
• Julia Bielicki and Valentina Basoli for their JPIAMR projects
• Christina Loi for her BRIDGE – Proof of concept project

Check out Research Professional for more national and international Calls.