Six SNSF Starting Grants awarded to EPFL researchers

Congratulations to Yana Shkel (IC), Giulia Tagliabue (STI), Robert West (IC), Victor Gorbenko (SB), Mats Stensrud (SB) and Florian Richter (SB) for winning an SNSF Starting Grant each!

Due to Switzerland’s status as a non-associated third country in the Horizon Europe programme, the federal government mandated the SNSF to launch the funding scheme "SNSF Starting Grant". This transitional measure integrates the ERC Starting Grants and the SNSF Professorial Fellowships (formerly SNSF Eccellenza and PRIMA).

The programme is open to researchers with no more than 8 years after the date of their PhD defence, who have already achieved scientific independence and contributed to impactful research in their field. It offers up to CHF 1.8 million to cover the PI's salary (only if the grant holder does not have a professorship at the time of application), as well as personnel, equipment cost and other project-related funds for up to 5 years.

A total of 446 researchers applied to the 2022 SNSF Starting Grant call; 62 were awarded a grant for a total of 104 million francs. The overall success rate was 14%.

Six of these grants have gone to EPFL researchers:

• Yana Shkel – Functional Representations of Information: Theory and Applications– Yana will take on the position of assistant professor non tenure track at the EPFL School of Computer and Communication Sciences (IC) for the duration of the grant.

• Giulia Tagliabue – Nanoengineering of Evaporation-driven Hydrovoltaic Systems for Renewable Energy Generation – Tenure-track assistant professor Giulia Tagliabue is head of the Laboratory of Nanoscience for Energy Technologies (LNET) in the School of Engineering (STI). Learn more about Giulia’s project in this interview!

• Victor Gorbenko – The Fundamental Description of the Expanding Universe – Tenure-track assistant professor Victor Gorbenko is head of the Laboratory for Theoretical Fundamental Physics (LTFP) in the School of Basic Sciences (SB).

• Robert West – Self-Supervised NLP: From Text to Knowledge and Back – Tenure-track assistant professor Robert West is head of the Data Science Laboratory (DLAB) in the School of Computer and Communication Sciences (IC).

• Mats Julius Stensrud – A causal framework for Infectious disease control – Tenure-track assistant professor Mats Stensrud is head of the Chair of Biostatistics (BIOSTAT) in the School of Basic Sciences (SB).

• Florian Karl Richter – Ergodic Methods in Number Theory – Tenure-track assistant professor Florian Richter is head of the Chair of Ergodic Theory (ERG) in the School of Basic Sciences (SB).

The 2023 SNSF Starting Grant call opened on November 1, 2022 and closes on February 1, 2023. Are you interested? Contact your hosts to inquire about the internal deadlines and procedures. Register now for the EPFL Applicant Workshop to be held online on 1 December 2022!