Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Important information for potential proponents

The proposed work of the future research group is expected to make genuine methodological contributions to AI/ML or to the respective discipline via the development or advancement of AI/ML tools and concepts, rather than merely applying existing tools, and to demonstrate the ambition to advance the state of the art.

This year, the focus is on two parallel tracks

  1. Foundational AI/ML Research: candidates who advance the theoretical or methodological foundations of AI/ML in their own right.
  2. Advancing discipline(s) with AI/ML: candidates from any other discipline (e. g. life sciences, physics, environmental sciences, social sciences and humanities …) who develop or advance AI/ML concepts or methods to address open questions in their own field.

Candidate´s profile

  • VRG Leaders are young researchers (i. e. postdocs, up to 8 years after PhD) who want to establish their own independent research group within an host institute in Austria.
  • At the time of application, the VRG candidates must be based at home institutions outside of Austria. Specifically, this means the VRG candidate (i) must not have an employment contract with an Austrian institution in the time frame between three months before the submission deadline to the submission deadline, and (ii) must have been employed at a foreign research institution for at least two years in the last three years before the submission deadline.
  • During the duration of the project and upon positive evaluation of the group leader´s performance, the candidate will be offered a tenure-track position.

Funding

  • WWTF will fund up to 4 positions, with up to 1.8 Mio Euro each (for 6 up to 8 years)
  • The majority of candidate´s salary will be covered by BOKU (in-kind contribution)

The application is done together with a proponent from the host institution. The proponent is an established scientist based at BOKU (host institution) that intends to hire & host the candidate from abroad.

Important deadlines

  • The final deadline for submission is on March 2, 2027. The projects are submitted online, via the WWTF Funding Portal.
  • Our next internal step is to gather the list of potential proponents from BOKU. If you are interested to host a VRG leader as proponent, let us know before November 2, 2026, together with the potential research field / topic for the application (3-4 sentences are enough). This information must be sent to: projectsupport(at)boku.ac.at 

Information: WWFT VRG Info Sheet 2027

 

The BOKU Pre-Award Team of the Research Support, Innovation & Technology Transfer assists researchers interested in submitting such projects. Please, contact us in advance if you wish to submit to this call and for any further questions 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

28.10.2026