Support for young people, young researchers and early career researchers (ECRs)

Support for the outward academic engagement of Swiss emerging talent, young researchers and early-career researchers is a key priority of international education cooperation for the period 2025–2028. SERI provides targeted support to stakeholders that enables these target groups to compete and connect with the world’s leading experts in their fields – guided by the principle of excellence.

Support in this area is focused on various target groups and involves a wide range of instruments. SERI provides funding to organisations and institutions in Switzerland that pursue various multidisciplinary activities:

As globalisation advances, institutions that foster international, cross-disciplinary research and openness to new ideas are becoming increasingly vital. Institutes for Advanced Study (IAS) play a key role in this context.
Since 2000, Switzerland has supported the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, which offers postdoctoral researchers from Swiss universities a 10-month residency alongside around 40 international fellows in the humanities, social sciences, arts, life sciences, and medicine. Fellows are selected by a scientific committee, with academic excellence as the decisive criterion. The affiliated College for Life Sciences places particular emphasis on early career researchers – also a priority for the Swiss Confederation in its pursuit of international cooperation in education.
SERI seeks to build and deepen ties with countries that show promising research potential. By focusing on the Black Sea region, Switzerland seeks to foster transdisciplinary, cross-border exchange among outstanding researchers and artists. To this end, SERI supports the Center for Governance and Culture of the University of St. Gallen, which – through partnerships with the Center for Advanced Study in Sofia and the New Europe College in Bucharest – strengthens the international networks of Swiss scholars working in Eastern European studies. Research excellence remains the guiding principle.
The Institute for Advanced Studies in Nantes is another IAS that Switzerland supported. Between 2014 to 2024, IAS Nantes partnered with the University of Fribourg to expand international engagement between Swiss scholars in the humanities and social sciences and outstanding counterparts in countries of the Global South.

Further information

BFI-Botschaft: Talentförderung und internationale institutionelle Kooperationen in der Bildung

Legal basis

State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation SERI

Talent Promotion
Claudia Lippuner

Support for young people, young researchers and early career researchers (ECRs)

Selected partners for cooperation in education

Further information

Legal basis

Verordnung über die internationale Zusammenarbeit und Mobilität in der Bildung - Erläuterungen

State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation SERI