Opportunity Grants

Grant sum: max. 50 kCHF
Project duration: up to 12 months
Eligible partners: located in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Macau, South Korea, Taiwan and ASEAN member states.

Goals and objectives

The 'Opportunity Grants' support bottom-up initiatives of researchers from Swiss universities, universities of applied sciences, universities of teacher education, and public research institutes, linked to specific events or incidents in East and Southeast Asia.

These research-based initiatives aim at increasing the visibility of Swiss science, technology and innovation abroad.

Events or incidents eligible for Opportunity Grants can be:

• Large public happenings such as the Olympic Games, international or national expositions/biennales.
  
• Major environmental events such as the implications of a typhoon, earthquake or tsunami.
  
• Major economic and political developments such as the possible geopolitical implications of a presidential visit or a shift of power in a government.
• Launch of a new public policy such as new impactful agriculture or migration policies.

Eligibility

The call is open to all scientific disciplines and fields of research, including social sciences and the humanities.
Postdoctoral scientists, senior scientists and professors of Swiss federal and cantonal universities, universities of applied sciences, universities of teacher education, as well as public research institutes, are eligible to apply. Please check the eligible institutions here. The main applicant must be employed at one of the aforementioned Swiss institutions. Researchers of all nationalities are eligible to apply as main applicant.

Note to applicants from UAS/UTE: UAS/UTE staff with research responsibility (group leaders, researchers with 5+ years of experience) and in equivalent functions are eligible to apply. If in doubt or in case you are not sure whether your position is eligible to act as a Principal Investigator (PI), please email or .

A single Switzerland-based scientist or a consortium of Switzerland-based scientists from different research institutions can act as the main applicant. In the latter case, one of the members of the consortium must act as the main applicant.

The partner applicant has to be a senior academic researcher affiliated with a university of a public institute of the partner country. Asian researchers interested in acting as co-applicants on the Asian side have to contact their Switzerland-based peers.

Application Process

The Switzerland-based applicant must apply to ETH Zurich as the Leading House Asia. The application must be submitted online with the following attachments in one single pdf document (English).

The application shall include:

• Completed research plan
• CV of Switzerland-based PI (and any co-applicants), max. 2 pages each
• CV of Asian co-applicant (and any additional co-applicants), max. 2 pages each
• Any other supporting document(s)

Applications that do not follow the instructions will be dismissed.

The applications are now closed.