Funder: Austrian Science Fund (FWF)
Due Dates: Rolling (Applications)
Funding Amounts: Senior postdoc salary plus €45,000–€75,000 in project costs over 36 months
Summary: ESPRIT supports early-career researchers across all disciplines to lead independent research projects at Austrian research institutions.
Key Information: Applicants need an Austrian host institution and mentor, and generally must be within five years of their doctorate.
Description
ESPRIT (Early-Stage Program: Research – Innovation – Training) is an Austrian Science Fund career-development program for highly qualified researchers from Austria and abroad. It combines an independent research project with mentoring and professional development to help early-career researchers establish their own research profiles, build collaborations, increase visibility, and improve career prospects. Recruiting, retaining, and attracting researchers back to Austria are central goals, alongside supporting outstanding women researchers.
The program funds clearly defined, innovative basic research across all disciplines. Innovation may involve new questions, methods, technologies, or applying existing approaches to new questions; incremental development of published data does not qualify. Time- and budget-limited clinical research is also eligible where results have no direct commercial interests. Projects must contribute to the principal investigator’s independent research profile.
