Replacing the previous FWF START and Elise-Richter

FWF has launched a new ASTRA Award program which is intended to provide support to postdoc researchers in the consolidation of their academic careers as an independent researcher. Postdoc candidates are eligible if the date of their PhD defense falls between two and a maximum of nine years.

ASTRA replaces both the previous Elise Richter and Elise Richter PEEK programs for women and the START Awards, and picks up where the ESPRIT program for early-stage researchers, successfully launched in 2021, leaves off.

There is one call per year, that will open for submission in July and closes on October 3, 2024.

Funding opportunity: from 500,000 up to 1 million euro for 5 years.               

Information: https://www.fwf.ac.at/en/funding/portfolio/careers/fwf-astra-awards

 

If you are interested to submit to this call and if you have missed the FWF information events, you can watch our internal seminar: Q@A Session FWF ASTRA, upload the slides and find the guidelines here.

Basically, the most important features for the ASTRA Price are the following:

- Each candidate can submit only two applications to this program.

- The target group is experienced researchers (category R3): meaning researchers that have already acquired competitive grants, have worked abroad and/or published in internationally-recognised peer-reviewed journals without the PhD supervisor.

- FWF encourages outstanding women: half of the prices will be awarded to women and they can obtain an extra €200,000 worth “tenure-package”.

- Usual project-related costs can be requested (including PI salary when needed); except “standard infrastructure”, publication costs and equipment (some exception). There is neither overhead nor the “5 % general costs” presents for instance in the “Principal Investigator Project” program.

- A career plan must be drawn up by the applicant together with the research institution, and a letter of support from the HI must be filled up and signed (by the head of your department or by the VR Prof. Obinger depending on how many departments are involved within this project).

- An alternative project plan (called Merit Award) can also be uploaded to describe how this project could potentially be conducted as a “Principal Investigator Project” with a reduced budget of max €450,000, for those who will be rejected after the hearing stage.

- Final advice: look at the page 29 of the guidelines to know the evaluation criteria!

Let us know in advance if you wish us to conduct a proofreading on your proposal: Latest, September 16, 2024, but of course the earlier the better).

 

The BOKU Pre-Award Team of the Research Support, Innovation & Technology Transfer assists researchers interested in submitting FWF projects. Do not hesitate to contact us for any question: projektsupport(at)boku.ac.at

Do not hesitate to also check regularly our webpage, where we inform researchers about upcoming calls: https://boku.ac.at/fos

Contact: olivier.guillaume(at)boku.ac.at

22.07.2024