FWF - #Connecting Minds

Call for #Connecting Minds Workshops now open!

Funding is available to teams of two to five researchers that combine both academic and social knowledge and are applying them to help tackle social, technological, ecological, and economic challenges by involving non-academic stakeholders in their research projects.

With the #ConnectingMinds program, the Austrian Science Fund FWF encourages researchers to involve non-academic stakeholders in their research projects. Funding is available to teams that combine both academic and social knowledge and are applying them to help tackle social, technological, ecological, and economic challenges. The focus is on transdisciplinarity, innovative research approaches, and support for community engagement and collective learning spaces.

The program is aimed at consortia of two to five internationally outstanding researchers at one or more Austrian research institutions.

For the current call, the FWF is supporting innovative #ConnectingMinds Workshops and #ConnectingMinds Projects with funding provided by the Fonds Zukunft Österreich as part of the thematic groups of the EU Missions. Research questions for this call can focus on the following topics:

EU Missions:

For more information and examples of possible subject areas, please see the application guidelines. Thematically open proposals will also be accepted for this call.

The #Connecting Minds program is divided into two phases:

  1. In the first phase, two to five researchers can apply to conduct a #ConnectingMinds Workshop. If their proposal is approved, the researchers can use this workshop to work together with the other project participants (including non-academic participants) to develop and advance their project idea and their planned research process for a #ConnectingMinds project.
  2. The second phase is to submit the proposal for a #ConnectingMinds Project based on the results of the workshop and to further elaborate the research project.

Funding period, funding amount and number of eligible projects

  • #ConnectingMinds Workshop: 1–3 days, maximum €12,000, approx. 15 workshops
  • #ConnectingMinds Project: maximum 60 months, maximum €1.25 million, approx. 3 projects on the EU Missions and 1 thematically open project

Further information: https://www.fwf.ac.at/en/funding/portfolio/collaborations/connectingminds

 

Two webinars regarding this call are organised by FWF:

Please let us know if you are interested in applying for this call but are unable to attend these webinars. FoS might additionally organise a BOKU internal webinar upon request.

Furthermore, an FWF Virtual Training on Transdisciplinary Research - Success Factors and Methods for Societal and Scientific Impact will be held on December 19, 2024 – Registration Link

 

ATTENTION: Internal BOKU deadlines

Please note that this programme is handled via PROFI, which means that the application must be submitted centralised in the FWF's electronic application portal (elane) by the Research Support Office (deadline 13.02.2025 2 p.m.)

In order to be able to estimate the expected workload, please send a brief notification right away, if you're planning a submission!

In order to be able to guarantee a timely submission, please comply with the following internal procedure:

 

By 27.01.2025, 09:00 hrs at the latest:

  1. Forward the ePM to FoS-PS
    For the electronic pre-submission clearance (ePM), the draft of the proposal as well as a relatively advanced version of the calculation is sufficient - final versions are NOT required. Please calculate right away in the cost form in elane and then upload a screenshot of this form in the ePM.
  2. Create the application in elane, assign it to BOKU and finalise the forms and attachments as far as possible
    As soon as the application has been assigned to BOKU, we can see it and check the entries already made, while you can still work on the content of the project description.
    Please do not finalise the application in elane until you receive the OK from us, as you cannot change anything afterwards and we only have limited editing rights in elane.

By 05.02.2025, 09:00 hrs at the latest:

  1. Approval of the department head in the ePM, otherwise we will not be able to submit the proposal.
  2. Upload of project description and scientific abstract to elane - ideally the final version, but at least the draft version available by then, which has to be sufficiently advanced for us to be able to check it formally in a reasonable way.
    In case of a later upload, a proposal check is subject to the availability of free resources in the Pre-award Support Team!

After the formal check, you will receive feedback from us as to whether the application can be finalised in elane or whether corrections are neccessary.
Please let us know briefly when you have finalised the application, as we unfortunately do not receive any notifiers from elane.

 

Submission by the Research Support Office is scheduled for 12.02.2025 to ensure a smooth submission of all applications (keyword: server overload on the day of the deadline). In any case, the application must be finalised in elane by then, otherwise we cannot guarantee a timely submission!

FoS wishes you all the best in writing your application!

05.12.2024