Bern Interdisciplinary-Grants (BIND Grants)
Seed funding for the preparation of a third-party application to national and international programmes in the field of interdisciplinary research
| Requirements | A planned SNF Sinergia, ERC Synergy or equivalent proposal for an interdisciplinary and interfaculty project based at the University of Bern or Inselspital. Participation of at least two departments and at least two faculties of the University of Bern. The Inselspital counts as the Faculty of Medicine. |
|---|---|
| Eligibility | Independent research group leaders incl. individual researchers from all faculties of the University of Bern and Inselspital who are eligible to apply to the relevant funding agency. For the entire duration of the project, all applicants must be employed by the University of Bern or the Inselspital. |
| Funding amount |
CHF 75,000-150,000 per planned application. A total of max. CHF 1 million is available per call. |
| Scope | Salary for a PhD student for a max. of 24 months or a postdoc for a max. of 12 months; materials and equipment; field and travel expenses. |
| Deadline | No call in 2023 (for the purposes of evaluation and modification). |
What is the goal?
The goal is to promote interdisciplinary research at the University of Bern. The submission of large interdisciplinary research projects requires intensive collaboration between partners from different departments and faculties. The ID Grants are intended to help research group leaders better prepare for the submission of applications to national and international programs. In this way, the position of Bernese researchers in the field of interdisciplinary research can be improved.
What is supported?
By way of seed funding, support is provided to researchers at the University of Bern or Inselspital who intend to submit an application for interdisciplinary project funding to a funding agency. Support is provided for the preparation of the following applications: SNF Sinergia, ERC Synergy, or equivalent national or international project funding. The project must be interdisciplinary and interfaculty in nature, i.e. at least two disciplines and at least two faculties of the University of Bern (incl. Inselspital) are represented. The Inselspital counts as the Faculty of Medicine.
The amount granted per application is usually CHF 75,000 to CHF 150,000, which is mainly intended to finance a PhD student or a postdoc to carry out preliminary scientific work for the submission of the third-party funding application.
How does it work?
- Independent research group leaders incl. individual researchers from all faculties of the University of Bern or Inselspital are eligible to apply if they are also eligible to apply to the corresponding funding agency (e.g. academic position, maximum number of permitted projects per funding instrument).
- All applicants must be employed by the University of Bern or Inselspital for the entire duration of the research project.
- The applicants must not have already successfully submitted an above-mentioned application with the same configuration.
- The project must be based at the University of Bern or Inselspital.
- The exact rules can be found in the Regulations as well as in the application form.
- Please note the changes for postdocs as of 1 August 2019 (see footnote 7 in the application form).
- Please note that the last sentence of Art. 5.2 of the Regulations ("Bei Beteiligung von Angehörigen des Inselspitals muss die Koordinationsperson aus deren Kreis stammen" – In case of participation of members of the Inselspital, the coordinating person must come from their circle) is currently irrelevant, because only the University of Bern finances the ID Grants. This means that if members of the Inselspital are involved, they do not have to be the coordinator.
- To submit a proposal, please fill in the application form and submit it as a PDF document by email to the Vice-Rectorate Research. The proposal can be written in German or English.
- The evaluation will be based on the following criteria: a) qualification of the applicants, b) scientific quality and innovativeness of the project, c) interdisciplinarity of the project, d) feasibility of the plans, e) chances of success of the third-party application. The best-qualified and most promising applications will be supported.