Please note: Due to the lack of funding budget, the FWF has to suspend the next call (planned for 3 November 2022). We ask for your understanding. Further information.

With the 1,000 Ideas Programme, the FWF provides funding for completely new, daring, or particularly original research ideas that lie outside the current scientific understanding. The key aim is to investigate future-oriented research topics with high scientific and transformative potential.

Target group

• Qualified principal investigators – both established researchers and those at an early stage of their career (usually with a PhD/MD – who work or want to work at Austrian research institutions.
• Formal applications are submitted by the Austrian research institution; there is no limit to the number of applications that can be submitted by a research institution.
• A principal investigator can only be involved in one project application. The FWF’s limit on the number of funded projects in other programmes does not apply to applications for the 1,000 Ideas Programme.

Objectives

• Foster creativity, encourage risk-taking, and facilitate the development of novel, innovative research domains
• Focus on high-risk, original, or transformative research at an early stage, which may be too premature to have very good chances of obtaining funding via existing grant programmes due to the unconventional design, lack of validating data, and/or the high risks involved
• Address visionary research ideas that cross disciplinary boundaries and/or are not yet the subject of debates in academic research and/or in society

Requirements

• International scientific or scholarly publications
• During the course of the project, the principal investigator must be employed to an extent of at least 50% at a research institution; this must be confirmed by the research institution. Funding of the 1,000 Ideas programme cannot be used to finance this percentage of the PI’s employment.
• In most cases, a completed PhD/MD at the time of submission
• Anonymised submission, i.e. it must not be possible to identify the identity and career level of any researchers and cooperation partners (Austrian and international) or the names of any research institutions (Austrian and international) from the research proposal
• The research proposal must contain

• Summary, max. 1 page, which is understandable for scientists from outside the respective discipline 
• Research approach, max 3 pages, a project description primarily addressing the project’s transformative potential and its scientific and scholarly basis
• Project implementation, max. 2 pages, a description addressing the planned realisation of the proposed research including a logical and step-by-step plan 
• Risk assessment and learning potential, max. 1 page
• References, list of works cited (max. 15 references).

• The proposals received will be checked very rigorously with regard to form and anonymity, and proposals that do not meet the requirements will be returned without review.

Length

• Minimum of 6, maximum of 24 months

Level
Minimum of €50,000 and maximum of €150,000. The following costs are eligible for funding: Personnel costs for the PI’s own position (up to 50%) as well as staff, material, equipment, travel, other costs, and 5% general project costs. No funding is available for doctoral positions.

Applications
Using the FWF’s electronic application portal (elane)

• Start of call for applications: currently no pending calls

Allocation

• Double-blind selection procedure
• Decisions are made by the FWF Board based on the recommendations of the 1,000 Ideas Programme jury

Contact 
Specialist departments 

Electronic application portal
elane