doc.funds

Attractive career opportunities for doctoral students help them gain a foothold in promising research fields – doc.funds grants strengthen doctoral training programs in Austria. The program facilitates scientific or arts-based education and training for doctoral students in existing structured doctoral programs. It helps universities sustainably reinforce their educational and training programs in the long term and provide junior researchers with excellent working conditions.

Target group

The funding program is aimed at all Austrian research institutions entitled to grant doctoral degrees, where at least 5 researchers or arts-based researchers join to form a consortium to implement a project.

Funding goals

The main objective is to support excellent research or arts-based research training for doctoral students in existing doctoral programs that have been in place for at least 2 years.

In the long term, it is intended to contribute to reinforcing research orientation and to consolidating existing education and training structures for highly qualified junior researchers.

Funding period and funding amount

  • Maximum 48 Months
  • Personnel costs for 5 to 10 doctoral candidates plus training costs of up to €5,000 per doctoral candidate position per year

Prerequisites

  • Consortium of at least 5 researchers from universities and universities of applied sciences with outstanding research records by FWF standards
  • A target of 30% of the underrepresented gender in the consortium; the composition of the consortium is one of the deciding factors in the review and evaluation process.
  • The existing doctoral program must have been running for at least 2 years on the date of the application deadline.
  • Binding basic funding by the lead research institution (and any partner research institution(s)), i.e. provision of all necessary infrastructure, financial means for ongoing operation, and ensuring institutional affiliation
  • Involvement of doctoral students in a focused and consistent research framework; education through research
  • Existing structures and procedures for:
    • Admission and selection of doctoral candidates
    • Supervision and monitoring, suitable working conditions
    • Completion of the doctoral program
  • Based on and oriented towards international standards
  • No applications accepted for additional funding for ongoing FWF-funded projects from the Doctoral Programs, doc.funds, or and doc.funds.connect programs
  • For further details, please see the application guidelines.

Approval

  • Late November 2025 by the FWF Scientific Board based on the recommendation of the international doc.funds jury; recommendations are made on the basis of an international peer review and hearings
  • Recommendations are prepared in the doc.funds jury meeting on November 13 and 14, 2025

Number of eligible projects

About 5 projects funded per call

Funding institution

Austrian Science Fund (FWF) (financed with funds from the Fonds Zukunft Österreich)

Submissions

Dec. 9, 2024 to Mar. 5, 2025 (02:00 pm Vienna local time)

Inquiries and contact

Mag.a Birgit Woitech
birgit.woitech(at)fwf.ac.at
+43 676 83487 8602

Event(s)

Jan. 21, 2025: FWF Webinar (DE): Focus on doc.funds

Jan. 27, 2025: FWF Webinar (DE): Focus on doc.funds

Application portal