The 1000 Ideas program funds completely new, high-risk, or particularly original research ideas that go beyond our current scientific understanding. The focus is on seed funding for forward-looking topics that have high transformative potential for science and research.

Target group

This funding program is aimed at researchers from all disciplines.

Funding Goals

The program’s goal is to encourage risk-taking, foster creativity, and facilitate the development of novel, innovative research areas. It focuses on original, high-risk, or transformative early-stage research that due to unconventional design, lack of validation data, and/or associated high risks may be too premature to have a very good chance of being funded through existing programs.

Funding period and funding amount

• 6 to 24 months
• €50,000 to €175,000
• The principal investigator’s own salary can only be financed up to 50%; doctoral candidate positions are not eligible for funding

Prerequisites

• The applicant must have the academic qualifications needed to lead the proposed research project, usually a PhD/MD
• The principal investigator must be employed at a research institution to an extent of at least 50% for the duration of the project (this extent of employment may not be financed by funds from the 1000 Ideas Program), confirmed by the research institution
• Project to be carried out at an Austrian research institution with the necessary infrastructure
• For further details, please see the application guidelines.

Approval

• Double-blind selection procedure
• Review and funding recommendation by the international jury of the 1000 Ideas program
• Some proposals are drawn at random from a pool of applications deemed worthy of funding by the jury.
• Funding decisions made by the Scientific Board of the FWF, based on the jury’s reviews

Number of eligible projects

Approximately 20 projects