Call for Opportunity Grants 2021

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

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 exhibitions/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. The main applicant must be employed at one of the aforementioned Swiss institutions. Researchers of all nationalities are eligible to apply as main applicant.

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

Timeline

Call launch: 3 May 2021
Application deadline: 18 July 2021
Review process: July-October 2021
Decision: early November 2021
Earliest project start: January 2022
Project duration: up to 12 months

Application Process

The Switzerland-based prospective applicant must apply to ETH Zurich as the Leading House Asia. The submission of the application takes place online and consists of two parts (as stated in the call guidelines):

1. Submission of your application details via the application form online.
2. Upload of your application form with the requested appendices in one single pdf document via the application form online.

Applications that do not follow the compulsory two parts, and/nor respect the one single pdf document guideline will be automatically dismissed.