This funding line is aimed at excellent researchers who successfully defended their PhD more than 7 and less than 12 years prior to 14 January 2025.

Funding amount and period: up to € 2 million for a period of 5 years (in exceptional cases up to € 3 million)

Application deadline: January 14, 2025

Contact person at FOR: Wolfgang Reik(wolfgang.reik@kit.edu)

The collaborative third-party funding portal of the Front Offices went online on 01.10.2024– now also available in English and with a new design! The proven structure of the link collection has been retained and has been supplemented with additional information necessary for the implementation and planning of externally funded projects. There is also a new way to access the information by selecting your project phase for easier orientation

The online seminar (held in German) is aimed at researchers who have little experience of applying for federal project funding for example to the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection. The ministries are generally supported by project management agencies.

This funding instrument aims to promote synergies in research. Ambitious research problems that cannot be tackled alone are to be solved jointly by a group of two to four outstanding researchers from one or several institutions.

Funding amount: up to €10 million

Funding period: 6 years

Application deadline: November 6, 2024

Contact person at FOR: Wolfgang Reik (wolfgang.reik@kit.edu)

This funding is designed to support excellent Principal Investigators who have successfully defended their first PhD more than two years, and less than seven years prior with starting their own independent research team or programme. 

Funding amount: up to 2,5 Mio. €

Funding period: 5 years

Application deadline: October 15, 2024

Contact person at FOR: Wolfgang Reik (wolfgang.reik@kit.edu)

A funding program for visionary projects from the field of basic research holding the potential for major scientific breakthroughs, but also for failure.

Funding amount: up to € 1.3 million

Funding period: 3 to 5 years

Application deadline: September 3, 2024, 14:00 CET

Contact person at FOR: Anna Dost (anna.dost@kit.edu)

In the area of scientific instrumentation, sustainable and resource-conserving usage can consist of repairing defective or older instrumentation and upgrading it to the latest standard instead of replacing it with a new one. When submitting a proposal to the DFG, funding can therefore also be requested to upgrade existing instrumentation (instead of purchasing new instrumentation).

The "Standard Allowance for Equity and Diversity” module and the sections on the promotion of gender equality in proposals submitted under coordinated programmes were expanded to all dimensions of diversity in order to support a cultural shift towards greater diversity in the research system as a whole.

Suitable candidates can be proposed to the Executive Board of KIT until April 10, 2024. The target group are scientists who have developed an independent research profile since completing their PhD, which must not date back more than 6 years, and who do not yet hold a W3 professorship. Each year, several prizes worth 200,000 euros each are awarded. FOR contact: Aleksandra Olszynka

Funding of up to €1.95 million is provided per research group for a period of five years. Priority is given to research topics that make cooperation across the boundaries of the classical natural science disciplines imperative.

With this funding program, the Carl Zeiss Foundation (CZS) supports unconventional research projects by interdisciplinary groups.

With the newly established funding opportunity, researchers who initiate transformation processes through joint research with non-academic partners can apply for up to €1.8 million.

Provided in the third-party funding portal and in the “KIT Formular- und Vorlagenmanagement” (template management SharePoint homepage).

Please only use this version as structural changes have been made to the form.

The measure KIT Future Fields funded within the framework of the university of excellence concept specifically supports scientists at KIT who are pursuing highly innovative, high-risk projects at the frontiers of science and at the interface between disciplines which are expected to give rise to scientific breakthroughs. The calls for proposals for Stages 1 (idea generation) and 2 (pilot projects) are open, deadline in January 2024.

Due to the dissolution of the Special Fund for Large-scale Research at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, some information on the applicant institution has been adjusted for applications to the federal and state ministries. Please refer to our new templates.

The HEiKA project call is addressed to scientists at KIT and Heidelberg University. It aims at funding joint cooperation projects with high innovation potential in the period from 1.1. to 31.12.2024. The funding volume comprises a maximum of 80,000 EUR per project. The project selection will take place on 17.10.2023 in Karlsruhe.

Joint project ideas can be submitted by mail to info@heika-research.de up to and including 28.8.2023.

for the subject-specific and practical supplementation of the code "Guidelines for Ensuring Good Scientific Practice".

Announcement of the University of Excellence project via circular from the Presidential Board.

on Horizon 2020 Actions.

FAQs on UK Participation

Horizon 2020 Underwrite Q&A

In the “UCART” project, physicist Professor Anke-Susanne Müller is working on a new method of radiotherapy in which tumors are irradiated directly in the body using an electron accelerator. In the “CoMet2” project, electro-biotechnologist Professor Dirk Holtmann wants to develop a process with which CO2 can be converted into valuable chemicals. With the wildcard program, the foundation is supporting these two unconventional research projects with 900,000 euros each for a period of two years.

New production cycles that can turn used products into new ones are needed for a resource-conserving, low-emission and at the same time competitive and strong economy. The Collaborative Research Center "Circular Factory for the Everlasting Product" deals with the question of how the maximum value retention of products can be achieved with the help of innovative production systems. Researchers from the fields of production engineering, product development and materials technology, ergonomics, robotics, computer science and knowledge modeling are cooperating in the network to investigate this question. (KIT Karlsruhe, Spokesperson: Professor Dr.-Ing. Gisela Lanza)

With their project proposals, two early-stage researchers from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) were successful in the recent call for Starting Grants of the European Research Council (ERC): Kathrin Gerling, Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and Accessibility, has proposed “AccessVR” to make virtual reality accessible for people with disabilities. Tenure-track professor Philip Willke conducts research at the interface between quantum technologies and nanosciences. His project ATOMQUANT will focus on an architecture for quantum information processing and magnetic sensor technology on the atomic level.

Molecular biologist Professor Holger Puchta has received funding in a Reinhart Koselleck project of the German Research Foundation (DFG) for his work on the targeted restructuring of plant genomes. A pioneer in green genetic engineering, Puchta has been using molecular scissors in plants for 30 years. The new project aims to use the CRISPR/Cas method to freely combine genes in crop plants - thus realizing Gregor Mendel's dream. This is also important in order to better adapt agricultural crops to global warming in the future.

The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded the project "Origami inspired thermoelectric generators by printing and folding" (ORTHOGONAL) by Professor Uli Lemmer (LTI and IMT) with an ERC Advanced Grant of 2.4 million Euros.

The young scientist Julian Quinting from the Institute for Meteorology and Climate Research - Troposphere Research (IMK-TRO) was awarded for his project ASPIRE by the European Research Council (ERC). The ERC is funding the project with almost 1.5 million euros over 5 years.

The DFG also funds the SFB/Transregio "Phenomenological Elementary Particle Physics after the Higgs Discovery" (TRR 257) for another four years. The researchers from KIT (host university), RWTH Aachen University, and the University of Siegen aim at a deeper understanding of the fundamental concepts underlying the so-called "Standard Model" of particle physics, which describes the interactions of all elementary particles in a mathematically conclusive way. The goal of TRR 257 is to be a pioneer in the search for a possible "new physics" beyond the Standard Model.

For their research projects in the fields of computer engineering and quantum physics, the two renowned scientists will receive funding from the European Research Council (ERC) of around 2.5 million and 2.7 million euros respectively over the next five years.

Pascal Friederich, Tenure-track Professor at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), is awarded the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize of the German Research Foundation (DFG). The prize, endowed with 20,000 euros, is the most important recognition of early-career researchers in Germany.

The European Research Council is funding the "HiSCORE" project with around 14 million euros.

Dr. Tonya Vitova and Professor Laurent Schmalen receive up to two million euros each