With the pilot project (1st call for proposals Nov. 2019), the FWF supports the promotion of completely new, daring or particularly original research ideas that lie outside the current scientific understanding. The key aim is to investigate future-oriented research topics with high scientific and transformative potential.

Target group

• Qualified principal investigators—both established researchers and those at the beginning of their career—who work or want to work at Austrian research institutions.
• Formal applications are submitted by the Austrian research institution; there is no limit to the number of applications that can be submitted by a research institution.
• A principal investigator can only be involved in one project application. The FWF’s limit on the number of funded projects in other programmes does not apply to applications for the 1000 Ideas Programme.

Objectives

• Encourage risk-taking, foster creativity and facilitate the development of novel, innovative research domains;
• Focus on high-risk, original or transformative research at an early stage, which may be too premature to have very good chances of obtaining funding via existing grant programmes due to the unconventional design, lack of validating data and/or the high risks involved;
• Address visionary research ideas that cross disciplinary boundaries and/or are not yet the subject of debates in academic research and/or in society.

Requirements

• International scientific or scholarly publications
• During the course of the project, the principal investigator must be employed at least 50% at a research institution; this must be confirmed by the research institution.
• Anonymous submission, i.e. the identity, the career level of the researchers or the name of the research institution must not be recognizable from the research proposal
• The research proposal must contain
  • i) a project description primarily addressing the project’s transformative potential and its scientific and scholarly foundation
  • ii) a description addressing the planned realisation of the proposed research including a logical and step-by-step plan and
  • iii) a risk assessment, concluded by a list of works cited (references).
• The proposals received will be checked very rigorously with regard to form and anonymity, and proposals that do not meet the requirements will be excluded.

Length

• Maximum of 24 months

Level
Maximum of €150,000. These costs will be covered: Personnel costs for the own position (up to max. 50 %) as well as employees, material, equipment, travel, other costs and 5 % general project costs. The funding of doctoral positions is not possible.

For more information click "LINK TO ORIGINAL" below.