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Research in Switzerland Opportunities for foreign researchers in Switzerland

Switzerland is a world leader in research and development. What are the main research centres, and what opportunities are there for foreign researchers in Switzerland?

Significance of research in Switzerland

Most important research fields and sectors, which institutions carry out research in switzerland, research and development in swiss industry , working as a foreign researcher in switzerland, research funding in switzerland/swiss research grants.

Innovation and investment in research is a priority. Switzerland spent more than €5 billion on research and development (R&D) in 2015, which represents about 3 per cent of the country’s GDP – far above the average of 2.4 per cent, and even beating the USA (2.7 per cent) and Germany (2.9 per cent). Approximately 1.2 per cent of all scientific papers worldwide are produced by Swiss researchers – a remarkable statistic, considering the country’s small population.

Scientific research in Switzerland also supports the economy, particularly in areas such as the engineering, electrical and metal industry (the largest industrial employer in the Swiss economy), medical technology and the biotech industry.

Switzerland also prides itself on the international environment of its universities and research centres, with most research work being conducted in English. Some of the most important research in Switzerland, including projects at CERN, the European Space Agency, and European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST), involves a high level of international collaboration. Strong links with other countries have given Switzerland a significant advantage when it comes to cutting-edge research, and participation in EU research framework programmes has been particularly beneficial in recent years.

Switzerland ranks highly for scientific research in all fields. The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), the most important public funding research institution in the country, funds a wide range of research topics, from medicine to technology, and there are promising research opportunities for scientists in many different sectors.

Switzerland has a long history of excellence in physics. Leading research is carried out in Geneva at CERN, as well as the prestigious Federal Institute of Technology (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, ETH Zurich) , and many universities and research centres in the country are renowned for their studies of particle physics.

Life sciences are another key area of research and industry in Switzerland. The University of Basel is an important research hub for life sciences, while the Basel region is considered a world leader in pharmaceutical development due to the high concentration of important companies operating in the industry, including Roche and Novartis.

Swiss universities have an excellent reputation for research. The Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, EPFL) , Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich), the University of Zurich, the University of Basel and the University of Bern are regularly ranked as some of the top universities in the world for research and innovation. In the 2019 QS World University Rankings, the ETH Zurich was ranked seventh in the world, and third in Europe. In order to do so well in international rankings, universities must produce outstanding research.

The strong track record for research at these universities attracts the best scientists from around the world. The presence of the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva has also played an important part in attracting researchers from leading universities to collaborate on projects in Switzerland.

Some of the most important research is carried out at scientific institutes. Prestigious Swiss research institutes include: 

• CERN in Geneva (home to the largest particle physics lab in the world)
• Paul Scherrer Institute in Villigen and Würenlingen (the largest Swiss national research institute, specialising in natural sciences and technology)
• The Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology in Neuchâtel (a public-private partnership research centre specialising in microtechnology and nanotechnology)
• Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel (a research centre specialising in life sciences)

According to the 2018 Innovation Indicator study , Switzerland is the second most innovative country in the world. One of the outstanding areas was research and development (R&D) in Swiss industry, particularly ICT and life sciences. The average Swiss company invests 6.6 per cent of revenue in R&D, and many of the world’s largest investors, such as Nestlé, Roche, Novartis and ABB, are based in Switzerland.

Pharmaceuticals is one of the most important areas of R&D in Swiss industry. In 2016, the main Interpharma companies in Switzerland spent approximately €6 million on R&D in pharmaceuticals. Other important R&D centres in Switzerland include Google, food technology company Bühler, and microgravity research company SpacePharma.

Nearly 60 per cent of researchers in Switzerland are from other countries, making Switzerland the country with the highest proportion of foreign researchers in the world. The diverse, international environment at universities and research centres makes Switzerland an attractive option for anyone looking to pursue a scientific career in Europe.

Getting residency in Switzerland is dependent on employment; every researcher must get a work and residence permit within 14 days of their arrival in Switzerland, and provide their employment contract. EU or EFTA citizens can obtain a permit quite easily, providing they have a job offer, while citizens of Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia are subject to some restrictions. Workers from other countries can face some challenges in obtaining a permit, as they are admitted only if an employer has not been able to recruit a Swiss, EU or EFTA citizen. However, highly qualified scientists or academics with a degree from a Swiss university stand a better chance of getting a permit.

While English is the lingua franca of scientific research in Switzerland, learning the local language – French, German, Swiss German, Italian or Romansh, depending on the area – will make it much easier for you to integrate.

Costs of living in Switzerland are high, but salaries are also high, particularly for science and research careers. Skilled foreigners can expect a very good salary, especially when compared to other European countries. In 2010, the average monthly salary for a skilled job in the R&D sector was approximately €8,500 (gross). Swiss scientists are among the best-paid in the world.

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There is a wide range of funding opportunities for scientists in Switzerland. The main source of funding is the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), which offers support to the whole spectrum of scientific disciplines, from nanoscience to medicine, awarding more than €600 million to applications every year. The topic of the research is usually defined by the researchers themselves, and the majority of the funding schemes are open to all scientists working in Switzerland. The funding period is usually from one to four years, and the minimum amount for a grant is €44,000.

Aside from the SNSF, there are many other institutes offering funding in a range of disciplines. For example:

• Innosuisse in Bern (supports R&D projects and encourages entrepreneurs and start-ups)
• The Accentus Foundation in Zurich (supports scientific projects with charitable focus)
• Fondation Leenaards in Lausanne (offers study grants and supports a range of scientific projects)

Some institutions, such as the International Balzan Foundation and the Marcel Benoist Foundation also award prizes for research. Research funding and grant opportunities in Switzerland are impressive not only for the range of options, but also for the amount of money available. Compared to scientists in other countries, researchers working in Switzerland find it relatively easy to gain financial support for their projects.

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Funding opportunities

Postdoc.mobility.

Postdoc.Mobility fellowships are aimed at researchers who have done a doctorate and who wish to pursue an academic career in Switzerland. A research stay abroad enables such researchers to acquire more in-depth knowledge, increases their scientific independence and enhances their research profile. The fellowships include a grant for subsistence costs, a flat-rate for travel expenses and a possible contribution to research, conference costs and matriculation fees. In addition, fellowship holders can apply for a return grant to finance their initial period of research after returning to Switzerland. The return grant includes a salary and social security contributions. The funding period is in principle 24 months (fellowship) and 3 to 12 months (return phase).

Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP)

The HFSP Research Grants support innovative basic research into fundamental biological problems with emphasis placed on novel and interdisciplinary approaches that involve scientific exchanges across national and disciplinary boundaries. Research grants are provided for teams of scientists from different countries who wish to combine their expertise in innovative approaches to questions that could not be answered by individual laboratories.

Institutes for advanced study

Institutions that enable interdisciplinary interaction and greater openness to new ideas among academics are becoming increasingly important. Institutes for Advanced Study (IAS) play a pivotal role in this regard.

Scientific Exchanges

Scientific Exchanges is aimed at researchers who want to host their own scientific event in Switzerland, invite colleagues from abroad for a research visit to Switzerland, or visit their colleagues in another country.

Scientific conferences and workshops are the two types of event covered by the scheme. Research visits by Swiss researchers to other countries or by researchers from abroad to Switzerland are funded for a period of 1 to 6 months. For scientific events, the travel expenses and food and board costs of participants from abroad are covered, for research visits those of travelling guests.

Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions

EU career funding for mobile researchers: This programme aims to support researchers at different stages of their career. MSCA are open to all domains of research and innovation, from fundamental research to market take-up and innovation services.

Mobility grants in projects

Mobility grants are aimed at doctoral students who wish to improve their scientific profile by going abroad while being employed in an ongoing SNSF research project. A mobility grant can cover travel and living costs as well as fees for conferences and workshops of up to CHF 20,000. It is awarded for six to twelve months.

Scholarships for studies abroad

Visit the website of the Scholarship Service of swissuniversities where you can find various funding possibilities to go abroad.

State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation SERI

The State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation SERI is responsible for the allocation and awarding of grants for postgraduate studies at the European University Institute in Florence and the College of Europe in Bruges and Campus Natolin .

Navigation auf uzh.ch

UZH for Researchers

Quicklinks und sprachwechsel, main navigation, funding for established researchers, table of contents, 1 uzh funding instruments, 2 national funding instruments, 3 european and international funding, 4 foundations.

Established researchers are experienced scholars and scientists who independently conduct their own research and train staff. Diverse funding establishments and institutions offer funding to help finance the projects of established researchers.

Aside from general funding sources, there are also special programs and discipline-specific initiatives. Private foundations furthermore support research consistent with the foundation purpose.

The following overview includes the most important national and international funding sources.

Weiterführende Informationen

National and UZH Sources of Funding

UZH Grants Office Hirschengraben 48 8001 Zurich

The staff of the UZH Grants Office will be happy to support your inquiry for possible sources of funding. Phone +41 44 634 20 50

European and International Sources of Funding

EU GrantsAccess Seilergraben 53 8001 Zurich

The staff of EU GrantsAccess will be happy to support your inquiry for possible sources of funding. Tel. +41 44 634 53 50

Webseite EU GrantsAccess

Further Sources of Funding

• Access *Research Professional (via VPN)
• Index of Swiss Foundations (in German)
• Index of UZH Foundations (in German)
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Professorships Department

The UZH Professorships Department is your point of contact for all your concerns as a professor at the University of Zurich.

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Promotion of Research Funding

Funding programs.

Below you will find a list of the most relevant public funding agencies and funding programs for researchers at the University of Bern and Inselspital.

The Grants Office supports you in finding and acquiring the appropriate funding for your research project. If you are looking for a suitable funding scheme for a specific project idea, we would be happy to advise you. You can reach us at our general email address or contact your Grants Advisor  directly.

Key funding agencies

• Swiss National Science Foundation

The SNSF is the most important funding organization in Switzerland and supports scientific research in all areas. There are a wide range of project and career funding instruments on offer. The SNSF receives its mandate from the Swiss government. More...

Horizon Europe – 9th EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (2021-2027)

The goal of the successor to Horizon 2020 (2014-2020) is to ensure Europe's scientific excellence, tackle global challenges and boost the EU's innovation capacity and competitiveness. There are a wide range of project and career funding instruments on offer. More...

Innosuisse – Swiss Innovation Agency

Innosuisse promotes cooperation between academic research institutions and industry. It thereby lays the groundwork for successful Swiss start-ups, products and services. Projects are funded by the federal government and participating companies. More...

Further funding agencies

Select your area of interest for a list of other funding agencies as well as the corresponding contacts in the Vice-Rectorate Research:

Further information

Further lists and databases.

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Research grants

The Swiss Cancer Research foundation is the largest funding organisation for cancer research in Switzerland. It supports research projects by independent scientists working at Swiss research institutions.

As a scientist, you have the opportunity to submit an application for financial support for your research project. Application submission for cancer research grants is open twice annually. Funding is available for projects in all areas of cancer research: basic research, clinical research, epidemiological research, psychosocial and health services research. The GAP (Grant Application Portal) offers step-by-step guidance on submitting an application and provides information on the conditions for submission. Only applications submitted online via the portal will be considered.

Funding scheme at a glance

•  Online application submission by way of the Grant Application Portal by 31 January or 31 July
• Only industry-independent research projects with a clear relevance to cancer will be considered. A maximum of one ongoing project per main applicant is permitted
• The maximum grant amount is 375 000 Swiss francs over three to four years

Related documents

scientify RESEARCH research funding database

Research funding for researchers in switzerland.

For researchers in all disciplines and all career stages.

In this curated list of research funding opportunities, we focus on research and researchers in Switzerland. Funding opportunities include research grants, fellowships, travel grants, awards and more.

The pablove foundation, opsoclonus-myoclonus syndrome (oms) (pediatric neurology | worldwide).

For: Clinical fellows | Early-career principal investigators | Mid-career researchers | Postdoctoral fellows | Senior researchers

Letter of intent due: July 1, 2024

Application due: October 8, 2024

Pediatric Cancer Seed Grant (worldwide)

For: Clinical fellows | Early-career principal investigators | Postdoctoral fellows

Applied Microbiology International

Open access publishing fees grant (microbiology worldwide).

For: Doctoral students | Early-career principal investigators | Mid-career researchers | Postdoctoral fellows | Senior researchers

Rolling submissions

Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)

Investigator initiated clinical trials (iict) 2024 (switzerland).

For: Early-career principal investigators | Mid-career researchers | Senior researchers

Application due: November 1, 2024

Cure Parkinson's

Research funding (parkinson’s worldwide).

Application due: June 24, 2024

Myotonic Dystrophy Foundation (MDF)

2024 pilot grants program (myotonic dystrophy | worldwide).

For: Early-career principal investigators | Medical Doctors | Mid-career researchers | Senior researchers

Application due: July 12, 2024

Cystic Fibrosis Foundation

Path to a cure – collaborative research grant (cystic fibrosis worldwide).

Application due: July 29, 2024

Horizon Awards – Christiana Figueres Policy to Practice Award (microbiology worldwide)

For: Early-career principal investigators | Mid-career researchers | Organizations | Senior researchers

Application due: July 26, 2024

Horizon Awards – Rachel Carson Environmental Conservation Excellence Award (microbiology worldwide)

Alzheimer's drug discovery foundation, drug development rfp (alzheimer’s disease worldwide).

For: Early-career principal investigators | Industry researchers | Mid-career researchers | Senior researchers

Letter of intent due: May 13, 2024

Application due: July 22, 2024

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The State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) will provide direct funding to researchers in Switzerland whose participation in collaborative projects under Horizon 2020 is not funded by the European Commission. All the necessary information and steps concerning the submission of funding requests and financial reports to SERI are provided here.

Please note that this platform is intended solely for the submission of requests for the funding of Swiss partners in Horizon 2020 collaborative projects, which have been approved by the EU and in which Swiss partners are participating under third country status.

It is not possible to submit project proposals for EU calls or apply for funding for projects in which Switzerland is considered an associated country. Moreover, complementary national funding for the following activities is still available but not operated via this site either:

• participation in Euratom- or ITER-related activities (including Fusion for Energy);
• participation in European initiatives AAL, Eurostars and EDCTP (according to Art. 185 of the TFEU);
• participation in COST Actions;
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Swiss grants

All Swiss Grants and funding opportunities in Switzerland. Your guide to the most important research and development grants in Switzerland. At the moment there are various grants, such as Innosuisse Innovation, BRIDGE or the NTN Innovation Booster.

Innosuisse Grants

Innosuisse helps leverage your innovation: They support science-based innovation projects carried out by companies – particularly SMEs – working with public-sector research partners.

Innosuisse Flagship

Subsidy: No maximum budget defined

Scope:  The aim of this initiative is to stimulate innovation in areas particularly relevant to the economy or society by promoting transdisciplinary project collaboration. Within these projects, solutions are offered to challenges that can only be solved through collaborative work.

Read more about this call   or visit the Innosuisse website

NTN innovation booster

Subsidy: max. CHF 500,000 annually

Scope: The NTN – Innovation Boosters bring together interested teams from universities, business and society at national level around a defined innovation theme and stimulate the emergence and testing of concrete innovation ideas.

Themes of economic relevance are to be addressed in an innovative manner: new scientific findings provide important momentum and may lead to the launch of process, product or service innovations in the foreseeable future. The novel applications can impact both industry and the services sector.

Read more about this call or visit the Innosuisse website .

Impulse programme: Swiss Innovation Power

Subsidy:  ~CHF 450,000 per project

Scope: The Impulse programme Swiss Innovation Power aims to stimulate innovation activities, to maintain the strength of Swiss innovations and secure the long-term competitiveness of small to medium-sized companies in Switzerland in view of the current Covid-19 pandemic.

Read more about this call or visit the Innosuisse website

Swiss National Science Foundation

The Swiss National Science Foundation, SNSF, supports scientific research in all academic disciplines, including life sciences and medicine, through a wide range of research funding schemes.

National Research Programmes (NRPs)

Subsidy : From CHF 300,000 – 2,000,000

Scope: Research carried out by NRP consists of research projects that contribute to the solution of contemporary problems of national importance.

Read more about this call   or visit the SNSF website

Investigator initiated clinical trials (IICT)

Subsidy:  No maximum budget defined

Scope: The IICT programme is targeted at researchers who wish to conduct an investigator initiated clinical trial. Support will be given to clinical studies that are of value to the patients and address important unmet medical and societal needs but are not in industry focus.

SPIRIT – Swiss programme for international Research by Scientific Investigation Teams

Subsidy : ~ CHF 500,000 per project

Scope: SPIRIT’s vision and mission remain unchanged. The programme continues to strengthen cross-border research that involves researchers in Switzerland and in partner countries in the global South. The SPIRIT programme facilitates knowledge exchange and opportunities to collaborate between Swiss researchers and researchers in many countries around the world.

Sinergia – Interdisciplinary, Collaborative and Breakthrough

Subsidy : minimum CHF 50,000 and maximum CHF 3,2M

Scope: Sinergia grants support collaborative, interdisciplinary projects where breakthrough research is expected.

BRIDGE Programme

The BRIDGE programme is a joint programme conducted by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and Innosuisse – the Swiss Innovation Agency. It offers new funding opportunities at the intersection of basic research and science-based innovation, thereby supplementing the funding activities of the two organisations.

BRIDGE Proof Of Concept

Subsidy: 130,000 CHF

Scope: Support young researchers who aim to develop an application or service based on their own research findings. These projects may feature any type of innovation or research field.

Read more about this call   or visit the BRIDGE website.

BRIDGE Discovery

Subsidy: 850,000 CHF for single applicant and max 2,550,000 CHF (consortium of 3 partners)

Scope: Aimed at experienced researchers for basic as well as applied research with a strong societal or economic impact, in order to realise the innovation potential of research findings.

Swiss Foundations

The swiss heart foundation – research grant.

Deadline : 30 June

Subsidy : CHF 100,000 per year

Project duration : 1 to 2 years

Consortium : Open to researchers based in Switzerland

Scope : The Swiss Heart Foundation supports research on cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases by granting financial contributions for research projects conducted in Switzerland. Research proposals can be based on the following areas of interest:

• Atherosclerosis
• cardiac arrhythmias
• Heart failure
• High blood pressure
• Cardiac valve pathologies
• Congenital heart defect

Visit the Swiss Heart Foundation website

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Department of Computer Science

Four professors receive snsf starting grants.

Niao He, Ana Klimovic, Rasmus Kyng and Fanny Yang are among the recipients of a SNSF Starting Grant for their respective research projects. This grant is currently awarded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). Congratulations!

• mode_comment Number of comments

Since Switzerland is now a non-associated third country in the Horizon Europe programme, researchers from Swiss universities are currently not eligible to apply for a Starting Grant from the European Research Council. This funding is a transitional measure offered by the Swiss Confederation covering the ERC Starting Grants as well as the former SNSF funding schemes Eccellenza and PRIMA. An SNSF Starting Grant comes after several years of impactful research and is aimed at scientists wishing to launch an independent project and direct a team in Switzerland.

Four professors from our department have received the Starting Grant. One of them is Niao He. Her project “Optimization for Modern Reinforcement Learning: from Principles to Scalability” was one of the selected projects for funding. Deep reinforcement learning stands as a pivotal force driving the ever-expanding frontier of AI today. However, its successes have been overly reliant on massive computing power, empirical heuristics, and an array of engineering tricks, leaving important questions about the efficiency and trustworthiness of AI systems. In response to these challenges, the project strives to establish optimization foundations for reinforcement learning that embody both principles and scalability. Professor He and her team seek to contribute to the development of decision intelligence with theoretical insights and practical efficiency.

Niao He is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at ETH Zurich and leading the Optimization & Decision Intelligence (ODI) Group. She is also a core faculty member at the Institute of Machine Learning, ETH AI Center, ETH Foundations of Data Science, Max Planck ETH Center for Learning Systems and Illinois Institute of Data Science and Dynamical Systems. Her work lies in the interface of optimization and machine learning, with a primary focus on the algorithmic and theoretical foundations for solving data-driven decision-making problems.

Another chosen project was Professor Ana Klimovic’s “Dandelion: System Software Foundations for the New Era of Cloud Computing”. Serverless computing is a new paradigm of cloud computing, which makes the cloud easier to use and enables cloud platforms to optimize the performance and energy efficiency of the infrastructure under the hood. While serverless computing holds great promise, the system software infrastructure required to run it has not kept up with the requirements of today’s applications. The conventional approach of gradually retrofitting cloud system software that was designed over a decade ago is not sufficient to realize the full potential of serverless computing. Professor Klimovic and her team propose Dandelion, a new platform and reference architecture for serverless computing with the aim to improve the performance, security, and energy efficiency of serverless computing by fundamentally rethinking its programming model and building a fast, secure system software architecture that leverages the capabilities of modern cloud hardware.

Ana Klimovic is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at ETH Zurich. She is a member of the ETH Systems Group, where she leads the Efficient Architectures and Systems Lab (EASL). Before joining ETH, she spent a year as a Research Scientist at Google Brain and completed her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. She works on computer systems for large-scale applications such as cloud computing services, data analytics and machine learning. The goal of her research is to improve the performance and resource efficiency of cloud computing while making it easier for users to deploy and manage their applications.  

The third project receiving a grant is Rasmus Kyng's “A New Paradigm for Flow and Cut Algorithms”.  Graphs are mathematical models of networks, and the study of graph algorithms is one of the most fundamental topics in algorithm design. In 2022, Rasmus Kyng and co-authors developed almost-optimal algorithms for minimum-cost flow. This problem has been studied intensively since the 1930s, as it allows to model a host of important questions, such as how to route commodities through a transportation network, send data through a digital network, how to assign tasks to servers for processing in a data center, or even how to match customers with rides in a transportation market.  The SNSF starting grant takes these methods he and co-authors developed as the starting point for solving a broad range of graph algorithms much faster than what is currently known. The proposal will address a number of questions: How can we make modern graph algorithm theory work well in practice? How can we develop fast graph algorithms that avoid randomization and hence always succeed? How can we make graph algorithms that can quickly update solutions when the input data changes over time? And, what is the full extent of problems we can solve using the new blend of data structures and continuous and combinatorial optimization that fueled the recent breakthrough on minimum-cost flow?

Rasmus Kyng is an assistant professor at the Department of Computer Science, ETH Zurich, where he joined in the fall 2019. He finished his doctorate at the Department of Computer Science at Yale in the summer 2017, and then worked in the Theory of Computation Group at Harvard as a postdoc from 2018 to 2019. His research focuses on fast algorithms for graph problems and convex optimization, on probability and discrepancy theory, fine-grained complexity theory, and applications in machine learning.

Professor Fanny Yang will carry out research on the topic “A unified mathematical framework for trustworthy machine learning”.

Fanny Yang is an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at ETH Zurich. Previously she was a postdoctoral Scholar at Stanford University and a Junior Fellow at the Institute for Theoretical Studies at ETH Zurich. Her research interests lie in theoretically understanding and developing tools in machine learning and statistics that work well. Currently she is particularly curious about the generalisation properties of overparameterized models for high-dimensional data and obtaining more trustworthy machine learning models.

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• chevron_right Niao He
• chevron_right Ana Klimovic
• chevron_right Rasmus Kyng
• chevron_right Fanny Yang
• external page call_made SNSF Starting Grants 2023
• chevron_right These researchers have received Starting Grants

Automatic Cranial Defect Reconstruction with Self-Supervised Deep Deformable Masked Autoencoders † † thanks: The project was funded by The National Centre for Research and Development, Poland under Lider Grant no: LIDER13/0038/2022 (DeepImplant). We gratefully acknowledge Polish HPC infrastructure PLGrid support within computational grant no. PLG/2023/016239. The research was partially supported by the program ”Excellence Initiative - Research University” for AGH University. † † thanks: 1 1 {}^{1} start_FLOATSUPERSCRIPT 1 end_FLOATSUPERSCRIPT Marek Wodzinski, Daria Hemmerling, and Mateusz Daniol are with the AGH University of Krakow, Department of Measurement and Electronics, Krakow, Poland. † † thanks: 2 2 {}^{2} start_FLOATSUPERSCRIPT 2 end_FLOATSUPERSCRIPT Marek Wodzinski is also with the University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland (HES-SO Valais), Institute of Informatics, Sierre, Switzerland. © 2024 IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.

Thousands of people suffer from cranial injuries every year. They require personalized implants that need to be designed and manufactured before the reconstruction surgery. The manual design is expensive and time-consuming leading to searching for algorithms whose goal is to automatize the process. The problem can be formulated as volumetric shape completion and solved by deep neural networks dedicated to supervised image segmentation. However, such an approach requires annotating the ground-truth defects which is costly and time-consuming. Usually, the process is replaced with synthetic defect generation. However, even the synthetic ground-truth generation is time-consuming and limits the data heterogeneity, thus the deep models’ generalizability. In our work, we propose an alternative and simple approach to use a self-supervised masked autoencoder to solve the problem. This approach by design increases the heterogeneity of the training set and can be seen as a form of data augmentation. We compare the proposed method with several state-of-the-art deep neural networks and show both the quantitative and qualitative improvement on the SkullBreak and SkullFix datasets. The proposed method can be used to efficiently reconstruct the cranial defects in real time.

Index Terms:

I introduction.

Cranial injuries are a common result of neurosurgery, traffic accidents, or warfare. Thousands of people suffer from such injuries every year and require personalized implants  [ 1 ] . The process of modeling and manufacturing such implants requires expertise, is time-consuming, and leads to substantial costs and waiting time. However, the process can be at least partially automated by deep learning algorithms  [ 2 , 3 ] .

Nowadays, the most common approach to automatic cranial defect reconstruction is to treat it as a volumetric segmentation that can be solved by deep neural networks  [ 2 , 3 ] . Numerous works present the usefulness of segmentation networks in this context, varying from the use of simple convolutional architectures  [ 4 , 5 , 6 ] , to more advanced methods involving image registration-based or generative augmentation  [ 7 , 8 , 9 ] . Some of the works attempt to reformulate the problem and to solve it in other domains, e.g. as a point-cloud completion task  [ 10 , 11 ] . Nevertheless, the major problem that all the approaches attempt to solve is to increase the heterogeneity of the training set leading to the improvement of the model generalizability. The challenge comes from the fact that it is extremely costly and time-consuming to acquire and annotate cases with real cranial defects. Therefore, the broadly used open datasets like SkullBreak, SkullFix, or MUG500 consist mostly of real skulls with synthetic defects suffering from relatively large homogeneity and difficulties with generalization into real cases  [ 12 , 13 ] . Therefore, it would be beneficial to propose a method that automatically generates heterogeneous ground-truth defects. The masked autoencoders (MAEs) seem to be perfect for this task.

The idea behind the masker autoencoders is to randomly delete part of the input and then train an encoder-decoder network to reconstruct the missing data. The task is considerably more difficult than training the classical autoencoders to just recover its input. The self-supervisedly pretrained masked autoencoders are then useful for other downstream tasks because they learn both general and detailed features associated with the data. Since masked autoencoders do not require the ground-truth annotations, they can be seen as a powerful self-supervised pretraining tool  [ 14 , 15 , 16 ] .

Contribution: In this work, we propose an alternative approach to the automatic cranial defect reconstruction by using a deep deformable masked autoencoder. We prove its usability and compare it to the state-of-the-art deep architectures dedicated to volumetric segmentation. We confirm that the implicit heterogeneity introduced by the masked autoencoder training improves the automatic cranial defect reconstruction.

II-A Deformable Masked Autoencoder

In this work, we propose an approach based on a deep masked autoencoder. During training, for each case, we generate a random number of patches with variable sizes that are going to mask out part of the healthy skulls, thus generating defective ones. The generated patches are randomly transformed by deformable elastic deformation. It results in smooth shapes that resemble real cranial defects. Such patches are then used to generate the ground truth for the self-supervision.

The defective inputs are then passed to the masked autoencoder network. The goal of the network is to reconstruct the input shape from the defective ones. This way, we slightly reformulate the problem from the missing shape segmentation into learning the overall shape of skulls. Since the patches are generated, inserted, and deformed randomly, this approach strongly increases the data heterogeneity, thus leading to improvements in the model’s generalizability. In this work, we use a Residual 3-D UNet as the autoencoder backbone  [ 6 ] . The processing pipeline is shown in Figure  1 .

Since the processed data is binary, we reconstruct the patches using the Soft Dice Score as the loss function. The initial ablations confirmed that such an approach is more stable and converges faster than experiments using mean absolute or mean squared differences. Other widely used objective functions to train masked autoencoders in the computer vision domain are not useful in the discussed context since we are processing directly binary data.

II-B Datasets and Experimental Setup

We train the proposed method on the healthy skulls available in the SkullFix and SkullBreak datasets  [ 12 ] . The training part of the SkullFix and SkullBreak datasets consists of 100 and 114 skulls respectively, resulting in 214 training cases. The volumetric segmentation networks used for comparison are trained using the combined datasets with known ground truth, resulting in a training set consisting of 570 defective cases. Exemplary cases from the SkullFix and SkullBreak datasets are shown in Figure  2 .

The proposed method, as well as the methods used for comparison, are evaluated using the SkullBreak and Skull Fix test sets consisting of 100 and 110 skulls with defects respectively. We compare the proposed method to several state-of-the-art segmentation architectures: (i) the Resiudal UNet  [ 17 , 18 ] , (ii) the UNETR  [ 19 ] , (iii) the SwinUNETR  [ 20 ] , (iv) the Attention UNet  [ 21 ] , (v) the SegResNet  [ 22 ] , all openly available in the MONAI library  [ 23 ] . We also perform ablation studies related to the influence of random deformable transformations applied during the input masking.

All the experiments are implemented in PyTorch with the support of TorchIO library  [ 24 ] . The input cases are centered, cropped to the skull, and resampled to 256x256x256 voxels. The evaluation metrics were calculated on the skull defects using original resolution after upsampling the inference output, without further postprocessing. The skull defects were calculated by morphological operations. We evaluate the methods using the Dice Coefficient (DSC), Boundary Dice Coefficient (BDSC), and 95th percentile of Hausdorff distance (HD95), following the conventions introduced by the authors of the SkullFix and SkullBreak datasets during the AutoImplant challenge  [ 2 , 3 ] . All the networks were trained until convergence using a computing cluster with NVIDIA A100 40GB GPUs. The Soft Dice Loss was used as the objective function, the AdamW as the optimizer with learning rate/weight decay equal to 0.001 and 0.01 respectively, and with decreasing the learning rate by exponentially decaying scheduler with the ratio equal to 0.995.

III Results and Discussion

The visual comparison of the methods on a randomly chosen case from the test set is shown in Figure  3 . The comparison presenting the performance concerning DSC, BDSC, and HD95 are presented in Figure  4 . The results are summarized in Table  I . The figure compare the proposed method to the state-of-the-art medical segmentation architectures.

The results confirm that the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art solutions by a considerable margin. The trained model improves the reconstruction quality with respect to all the quantitative metrics. Moreover, the results show that the random elastic deformations of the generated patches are crucial to improve the performance on the SkullBreak dataset. In case of sharp patches, the network is unable to learn smooth boundaries that are crucial for an accurate defect reconstruction. On the other hand, the effect is less significant on the SkullFix dataset where all the defects are sharp and the deformable improvement is not crucial.

Another advantage of the method is connected with easy extendability into new datasets. The method can be applied to all datasets containing healthy skulls, without the necessity of manual preprocessing and defect synthesis. Therefore, in future work, we plan to acquire and combine more open datasets consisting of healthy skulls from computed tomography.

The disadvantage of the proposed method is a longer training time. Training of the method on just 214 cases required about 1200 epochs to converge, in contrast to the supervised segmentation architectures which all converged before reaching 500 epochs. It is connected with the fact that the proposed method needs to learn the variability of the whole skull, including facial regions and significantly larger defects, not present in the ground truth of the SkullFix/SkullBreak datasets. Nevertheless, there is no significant difference in the inference time between the approaches, allowing one to perform the inference in less than 100ms using a modern workstation equipped with e.g. NVIDIA RTX 3090 GPU.

The method could be further improved by augmenting the healthy skulls, before performing the patch generation and masking. This could lead to a further increase in the dataset heterogeneity and the model generalizability.

IV Conclusions

In this work, we proposed an alternative method to automatic cranial defect reconstruction based on the self-supervised deep masked autoencoders, enhanced by random elastic deformations of the masked input patches. We compared the proposed method to several state-of-the-art solutions and confirmed that it improves the reconstruction quality by more than 0.1 and 1.0 mm in terms of Dice score and Hausdorff distance respectively. In further work, we plan to extend the proposed approach by providing augmentation to the healthy skulls themselves to further increase the dataset heterogeneity. Moreover, we plan to extend the comparison using other datasets and confirm the usability in real clinical settings.

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• [2] Jianning Li et al., “AutoImplant 2020-First MICCAI Challenge on Automatic Cranial Implant Design,” IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging , vol. 40, no. 9, pp. 2329–2342, 2021.
• [3] Jianning Li et al., “Towards clinical applicability and computational efficiency in automatic cranial implant design: An overview of the autoimplant 2021 cranial implant design challenge,” Medical Image Analysis , vol. 88, pp. 102865, 2023.
• [4] B. Yang, K. Fang, and X. Li, “Cranial Implant Prediction by Learning an Ensemble of Slice-Based Skull Completion Networks,” MICCAI 2021, Cranial Implant Design Challenge , vol. 13123 LNCS, pp. 95–104, 2021.
• [5] H. Mahdi et al., “A U-Net Based System for Cranial Implant Design with Pre-processing and Learned Implant Filtering,” MICCAI 2021, Cranial Implant Design Challenge , vol. 13123 LNCS, pp. 63–79, 2021.
• [6] M. Wodzinski, M. Daniol, and D. Hemmerling, “Improving the Automatic Cranial Implant Design in Cranioplasty by Linking Different Datasets,” MICCAI 2021, Cranial Implant Design Challenge , vol. 13123 LNCS, pp. 29–44, 2021.
• [7] David G Ellis and Michele R Aizenberg, “Deep Learning Using Augmentation via Registration: 1st Place Solution to the AutoImplant 2020 Challenge,” MICCAI 2020, Cranial Implant Design Challenge , pp. 47–55, 2020.
• [8] K. Kwarciak and M. Wodzinski, “Deep Generative Networks for Heterogeneous Augmentation of Cranial Defects,” Proceedings of the IEEE/CVR International Conference on Computer Vision - LIMIT Workshop , pp. 1066–1074, 2023.
• [9] M. Wodzinski et al., “Deep learning-based framework for automatic cranial defect reconstruction and implant modeling,” Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine , vol. 226, pp. 1–13, 2022.
• [10] M. Wodzinski et al., “High-Resolution Cranial Defect Reconstruction by Iterative, Low-Resolution, Point Cloud Completion Transformers,” International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention , pp. 333–343, 2023.
• [11] P. Friedrich et al., “Point Cloud Diffusion Models for Automatic Implant Generation,” International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention , pp. 112–122, 2023.
• [12] O. Kodym et al., “SkullBreak / SkullFix – Dataset for automatic cranial implant design and a benchmark for volumetric shape learning tasks,” Data in Brief , vol. 35, 2021.
• [13] J. Li et al., “MUG500+: Database of 500 high-resolution healthy human skulls and 29 craniotomy skulls and implants,” Data in Brief , vol. 39, 2021.
• [14] Kaiming He, Xinlei Chen, Saining Xie, Yanghao Li, Piotr Dollár, and Ross Girshick, “Masked autoencoders are scalable vision learners,” in Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF conference on computer vision and pattern recognition , 2022, pp. 16000–16009.
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Limited Submission Opportunity: William T. Grant Scholars Program

URL: https://wtgrantfoundation.org/grants/william-t-grant-scholars-program

OBJECTIVES :

The program supports career development for promising early-career researchers. The William T. Grant Scholars Program funds five-year research and mentoring plans that significantly expand researchers’ expertise in new disciplines, methods, and content areas. The foundation supports research in two distinct focus areas:

1) Reducing Inequality: In this focus area, the foundation supports studies that aim to build, test, or increase understanding of programs, policies, or practices to reduce inequality in the academic, social, behavioral, or economic outcomes of young people ages 5-25 in the United States, especially on the basis of race, ethnicity, economic standing, language minority status, or immigrant origins.

2) Improving the Use of Research Evidence: In this focus area, the foundation supports research to identify, build, and test strategies to ensure that research evidence is used in ways that benefit youth. The foundation is particularly interested in research on improving the use of research evidence by state and local decision makers, mid-level managers, and intermediaries.

FUNDING INFORMATION : up to $350,000 over 5 years; 7.5% IDC

In the first 3 years of their awards, Scholars may apply for additional awards to mentor junior researchers of color.

ELIGIBILITY RESTRICTIONS :

Major divisions (e.g., College of Arts and Sciences, Medical School) of an institution may nominate only one applicant each year.

Applicants must have received their terminal degree within 7 years of submitting their application; in medicine, the 7-years’ requirement is dated from the completion of the first residency.

Applicants must be employed in career-ladder positions. For many applicants, this means holding a tenure-track position in a university. Applicants in other types of organizations should be in positions in which there is a pathway to advancement in a research career at the organization. The award may not be used as a postdoc fellowship.

INTERNAL SELECTION PROCESS:

Each college at BU may nominate a single applicant and will be managing its own internal submission process. Charles River Campus investigators may contact Joe Loftus, Director of Foundation Relations ( [email protected] ) with any questions regarding the application process or opportunity. Medical Campus investigators may contact David Gillerman, Senior Director of Foundation Relations, Medical Campus ( [email protected] ).

The Office of Research will provide Letters of Independence (required by the foundation) if multiple major academic units are nominating individuals for this opportunity. As such, Office of Research ( [email protected] ) and Joe Loftus ( [email protected] ) must  be notified of ANY NOMINEES  by Monday May 20, 2024. 

NOTE that a sample successful Scholars Program application is available in the Proposal Library .

DEADLINES: Sponsor Deadline:

• Mentor and reference letters are due by June 12, 2024, 3 PM EST
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University of Florida professor to conduct research on Blue Origin space flight

A University of Florida professor will fly as part of a commercial space crew on an upcoming suborbital mission to conduct research, using a rocket by space flight company Blue Origin .

Rob Ferl, distinguished professor and assistant vice president for research in horticultural sciences , will be the first NASA-funded academic researcher to conduct an experiment as part of a commercial space crew, a news release said. He will fly on the New Shepard rocket by Blue Origin, a company created by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, which has a mission of increasing access to space through reusable rockets.

Ferl is also director of UF's new Space Institute and, throughout his career, has studied how biology responds to spaceflight. A news release said Ferl’s work progressed from experiments in his Gainesville lab, to parabolic flight tests, to projects on the space shuttle and the International Space Station.

Prepare for launch: University of Florida announces plans for space research institute

A grant from NASA’s Flight Opportunities program is giving Ferl the chance to continue his work and “personally conduct experiments on how the transition to and from microgravity impacts gene expression in cells and, more broadly, to develop protocols for future ‘researcher-tended’ suborbital flights,” a news release said.

He said the program aims to leverage the commercial spacecraft community by having scientists and technologists fly experiments, payloads and a new advancement: people on vehicles to accomplish more in space. NASA has collected a group of flight providers that offer multiple avenues of access to space, such as Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic , the first commercial spaceline, among others, Ferl said.

"I get to go to space after putting in a whole career — decades — into trying to get this experience as a part of what a scientist can do," said Ferl in an interview with The Sun. "What I hope, and feel, is that by my going to space, doors will open up earlier to many, many more scientists who wish to experience space as part of their work in space. In the new commercial space economy, the ability to get into space for all kinds of reasons — for industry, for research, for the pure experience — is going to continue to rise... We're going to see more and more people going to space and the chances for scientists to go to space to do their own experiments, rather than have somebody else do them for them, is going to be there. Going to space is going to be a lot like going on a sea voyage to work on the sea."

Ferl and his colleague Anna-Lisa Paul — both professors of horticultural sciences with involvement in the UF Space Plants Lab — have pursued the understanding of plant gene expression in microgravity throughout their careers. However, most of their experiments have been done by astronauts in space.

A news release said, as Paul explains it, science is done “in space” and not “on the way to space.” This is because on launches to the space station, astronauts now generally fly separately from science payloads.

Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket allows scientists the opportunity to conduct science throughout the change from gravity to microgravity, and back.

"Our program at the University of Florida has leveraged as many vehicles, as many opportunities and as many experiences as we can to try to understand what happens to terrestrial organisms when we go to space," Ferl said. "Interestingly enough, all the work that we've done over the past 20 years, 25 years, with the space shuttle program and the International Space Station has involved, for the most part, things that have been in space for a while, compared to things that have been on the ground. We actually know very little about the transition from the earth to space. And these shorter, suborbital trips actually offer a wonderful platform for us to understand... the biological process of adapting to living in one gravity here on the earth to living in microgravity up there in space."

Both Ferl and Paul helped develop experimental devices called Kennedy Space Center Fixation Tubes (KFTs), which are often used on the space station to safely and effectively handle solutions in a microgravity environment.

KFT devices preloaded with plants will mix test materials (for this mission, Arabidopsis thaliana , a plant used in multiple extreme-environment experiments) and preservative solutions to “freeze” a moment of gene expression so researchers can study what was happening at different stages of the flight.

"Our experiment is both the technology and science demonstration of... how to biochemically freeze samples — biology samples — at various portions of the flight," Ferl said. "What I'll do is actuate those experimental containers at various parts of the flight. So the idea, then, is to understand what happens before flight; what happens after the rocket is done and you're boosted into space; what happens after you float for a few minutes in space; and what happens when you come back to the ground. My job is to take samples during all those periods of the flight."

Ferl will activate KFTs at four different points during the mission: prior to launch, when reaching microgravity, at the end of the weightless period as the vehicle begins to descend and upon landing. From the ground, members of the UF Space Plants Lab team along with Paul will receive information from the flight that will trigger four identical “control” KFTs. The team will bring all the plant samples back to its lab in Gainesville for analysis after the mission.

New Shepard reaches a point in orbit (formally known as an apogee) past the Kármán line, which is the internationally recognized boundary of space (62 miles above the planet's surface). Additionally, it is designed for the purpose of taking astronauts and research payloads past the Kármán line.

The flight will be suborbital with around 15 minutes in space. Ferl said he has trained to prepare his mind and body for the experience through flying in fighter jets, simulations and practicing how to successfully complete the experiment during the flight, among other things.

According to Blue Origin, the New Shepard capsule , named after Alan Shepard (the first American to go to space) is an autonomous, environmentally controlled crew capsule. This means there are no pilots controlling the spacecraft. The website also says the spacecraft's entire system is designed for operational reusability and minimal maintenance between flights, which decreases the cost of access to space and reduces waste.

The full crew as well as the target launch date for Ferl’s flight have not yet been announced by Blue Origin. The New Shepard flight launches from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One near Van Horn, Texas.

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‘Deal with the Devil’: Harvard Medical School Faculty Grapple with Increased Industry Research Funding

Updated April 24, 2024, at 10:55 a.m.

Though some researchers remain optimistic about the financial support industry can provide — enabling greater access to resources and personnel — others have warned about the fleeting interests of industry.

Over the past few years, the Medical School has seen a surge in industry participation in research. In 2021, HMS Dean George Q. Daley ’82 noted during his State of the School address that HMS had been diversifying its funding sources. The next year, he said HMS had seen increased commercialization revenue and sponsored research funding.

In a March interview with The Crimson , Daley expressed support for expanding partnerships with biopharma companies as part of the school’s efforts to diversify its funding sources.

“We continue to want to connect also through partnerships with the translational arm of our ecosystem, which is biopharma,” Daley said. “And biopharma is increasingly interested in partnering with the likes of Harvard Medical School.”

Specifically, Daley said the National Institutes of Health budget has not increased proportionally with inflationary pressures, providing a motivation to expand funding into private industries.

“I certainly hope and we continue to advocate that federal funding needs to grow, but that Harvard Medical School has to look for other sources,” he said.

And while many HMS researchers have embraced the financial support that comes from increased biopharma participation in research funding, some have also adopted a more wary stance.

‘What it Takes’

For some at the Medical School, the additional boost provided by biopharma funding may determine whether the research happens.

Jeffrey R. Holt, an HMS professor of otolaryngology and neurology, spoke to the power industry partners can have in propeling research forward.

“There’s a lot of development work that has to happen,” Holt said. “To pay for clinical trials gets quite expensive, so having an industry partner who’s willing to foot the bill for that is really important.”

“Biopharma can bring in large amounts of funding, and that’s sometimes what it takes to get things into the clinic,” he said.

Holt also pointed to the importance of the extra funding in bringing in the manpower — and expertise — required for large-scale research projects.

“We have 12 people involved” in the lab, he said. “But by partnering with one of the biopharmas, they can bring teams of hundreds of folks who have a lot of experience with developing biological therapies.”

“They can bring teams that have very specific expertise to address the question of common interest,” Holt added.

HMS Executive Director of Therapeutics Translation Mark Namchuk said industry exposure is also crucial for current Medical School students.

“I think we need to come back to the fact that so many of the people that we’re training, whether they be graduate students or postdocs — their careers are going to be in the biopharmaceutical industry,” Namchuk said.

As a result, he said, “I would love for us to work in a more integrated fashion than has been traditional with biopharma.”

Currently, Namchuk said, the typical partnership between researchers and a biopharma company is marked by infrequent interaction.

“I would be more in favor of truly collaborative research work, where it’s both in the company and the university’s best interests,” he said. “Garnering the benefit of really getting the best of both worlds — extraordinary academic researchers working with people with extraordinary skill and drug discovery, for example.”

Vivian Berlin, executive director of HMS at the Office of Technology Development, wrote in an emailed statement to The Crimson that “strategic alliances with corporate partners provide support that accelerates research, initiates intellectual exchange, and brings real-world problems directly into the lab.”

“Strategic alliances are managed by OTD’s Corporate Alliances team who work closely with research teams, schools, and departments across the university over the course of several years to progress their innovations,” she added. “We engage with a wide range of corporate partners who are leaders in various industries to advance Harvard innovations to solutions that positively impact society.”

Beyond the researcher-side benefits, some HMS professors have also recognized the benefits working with industry can have for patients down the road.

Pamela A. Silver, an HMS biochemistry and systems biology professor, noted the importance of connecting research with more translational applications, which working with biopharma companies can facilitate.

“The excitement of working on something that has real world value. You know, that nothing beats working on something that ultimately ends up in a patient,” Silver said.

“When you see what can happen, and the benefit that can have for a patient and the patient’s family, honestly, there’s nothing like it,” Namchuk said. “I would love for more of our faculty members to get closer to that experience.”

‘Massive String Attached’

But several faculty also pointed to the competing interests between academic labs and biopharma companies that have made funding collaborations difficult.

“It’s one of those classic ‘you signed a deal with the devil’ mindsets, where you could say you’re getting a lot of money, but it comes with this massive string attached,” HMS Professor of Pediatrics Jonathan C. Kagan said.

“HMS has strict policies that guard against undue influence and ensure that research funded fully or in part by industry remains free of undue influence. Scientific independence and the freedom to publish all results is an explicit stipulation in our sponsored research agreements,” HMS spokesperson Ekaterina D. Pesheva wrote in an emailed statement to The Crimson.

“Private funders have no role in the design, execution, analysis of the research conducted throughout HMS, nor in the selection and framing of research findings reported in a peer-reviewed publication emanating from this research,” she added.

Timothy T. Hla, an HMS professor of surgery, also pointed to the clash of communication philosophies between private companies and scientists.

“Basic sciences and academia are very open,” Hla said. “You want to share information, you want to publish, you want the science to move forward, because it takes a village for any discoveries.”

“In industry, they’re much more secretive with a lot of confidential material, confidential information,” he added. “They don’t want you to share a lot of what you’ve learned.”

In fact, Hla said, “You can’t necessarily reveal it to the outside world unless you clear it with them.”

According to Pesheva, HMS prioritizes faculty members’ rights to publish their results without industry influence. “HMS does not accept funding from industry with restrictions on publication,” she wrote.

Holt, the otolaryngology and neurology professor, noted that because these companies are usually profit-driven, researchers are also typically constrained to a narrower scope in their intellectual pursuits.

“A lot of what we do in academic research is driven by just curiosity and scientific interest,” Holt said.

“There are times where it’s come up, we’ve felt like there’s a certain path we’d like to follow to address some scientific questions,” he added, “but the biopharma company has thought, ‘Well, that is interesting, but it might not be profitable.’”

“And so they opted not to pursue things that we would have ordinarily pursued,” Holt said.

According to Kagan, partnering with biopharma companies can also prove risky for researchers, who may see the support stripped away without warning.

“Their interests can change on a dime,” Kagan said. “A company’s board of directors may ultimately say, ‘We’re investing too much money in our academic collaboration, so let’s cut this off tomorrow,’” Kagan said. “And that money immediately goes away.”

Pesheva wrote in a statement that HMS partnership contracts include provisions that require companies to provide “adequate notification” if they plan to terminate.

—Staff writer Veronica H. Paulus can be reached at [email protected] . Follow her on X @VeronicaHPaulus .

—Staff writer Akshaya Ravi can be reached at [email protected] . Follow her on X @akshayaravi22 .

Childhood dementia research gets funding boost from SA government and Little Heroes Foundation

Renee Staska's seven-year-old daughter Holly dreams of one day captaining the Port Adelaide women's football team.

But time is not on the side of the avid AFL fan, who alongside her five-and nine-year-old brothers, lives with a terminal illness.

"They think they're the fastest, the strongest, they have huge dreams," Ms Staska said.

"I don't want to be the one that takes the wind out of their sails and tells them that something is really wrong here.

"I just think they have every right to fulfil their dreams as much as they can."

The Adelaide siblings have all been diagnosed with Niemann-Pick Type C, which is one of more than 100 genetic conditions under the umbrella of childhood dementia.

According to the Australian Niemann-Pick Type C Disease Foundation, the disease causes an accumulation of cholesterol and other fatty acids in the body's cells, leading to progressive intellectual decline, loss of motor skills, seizures and dementia.

Most children with the illness die before turning 18.

Ms Staska said her children are already displaying symptoms.

"They are really struggling to keep up with their peers, they're struggling to participate in school, reading, writing, concentration," she said.

"They get sick quite a lot and it takes them quite a long time to rebound.

"But these symptoms are nothing compared to what they have on the horizon."

Calls for funding answered

The State of Childhood Dementia 2022 report states that about 90 children die in Australia every year from childhood dementia – a similar number of deaths as from childhood cancer.

Despite the high fatality rate, a report released by the Childhood Dementia Initiative last month found the condition received more than four times less government research funding than childhood cancer per patient.

After years of campaigning, researchers in South Australia have received $500,000 from the state government and Little Heroes Foundation charity, to grow childhood dementia research at Flinders University.

"It will allow our research group to grow what we do from single disorder research to multiple childhood dementia research," Flinders University professor Kim Hemsley said.

"The investment is also going to develop the next generation of childhood dementia researchers, which is incredibly important.

"We all hope that these disorders will be treated in our lifetime, I sincerely hope that's so, but we need more researchers in this field to help us make that happen."

SA government stepping in

SA Health Minister Chris Picton said the $250,000 contribution from the state government was a "one-off", but he was "open to having ongoing discussions with both Flinders University and Little Heroes Foundation".

"[The] state government generally doesn't provide research funding, that's generally done through the NHMRC (National Health and Medical Research Council), but… there's a relatively narrow amount of money that's been coming through the NHMRC grant process for childhood dementia compared to other conditions," he said.

"I think that's an appropriate reason for us to step in on this occasion."

The SA Premier Peter Malinauskas said around 150 South Australian children have childhood dementia.

He said the funding contribution from the state government was made following advocacy from One Nation upper house MP, Sarah Game.

"I can't think of anything more harrowing for a parent than the idea of having a child with dementia," he said during an at-times emotional press conference.

Little Heroes Foundation CEO Chris McDermott said only about 10 per cent of people know about childhood dementia and more community education was needed.

'We spend a lot of time hugging'

Ms Staska, who first spoke to the ABC about her children's condition in 2022 , described the funding announcement as "life-changing". 

She said the years ahead were "frightening", but her family tried to make the most of every day.

"That means saying 'yes' to a lot of things and exposing them [the children] to as many life experiences as I can," she said.

"We spend a lot more time hugging and we spend a lot more time having fun and making memories.

"There are families all over the country just like mine with children who are rapidly regressing and time is not on our side."

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IU researchers receive $4.8 million grant to study the role of misfolded protein TDP-43 in neurodegenerative diseases

IU School of Medicine Apr 23, 2024

INDIANAPOLIS—A new $4.8 million grant will support researchers from Indiana University School of Medicine and the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology to study how human neurodegenerative diseases are affected by the misfolding of the protein TDP-43. Misfolding occurs when a protein adopts a conformation which differs from the native one.

The researchers, funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, have developed an innovative approach to deciphering the role of TDP-43 misfolding in the pathology of frontotemporal dementias, limbic predominant age-related TDP-43 encephalopathy and Alzheimer’s disease. 

“The presence of misfolded proteins in the central nervous system is the hallmark of neurodegenerative diseases,” said Kathy Newell, MD , Jay C. and Lucile L. Kahn Professor of Alzheimer's Disease Research and Education at IU School of Medicine and a principal investigator of the project. “The argument for the pathogenic significance of various misfolded proteins results from the fact that mutations in the various genes encoding those proteins cause distinct genetically determined neurodegenerative diseases. Furthermore, misfolding of those proteins also occurs in sporadic neurodegenerative diseases.”

An international, multidisciplinary team has been assembled with expertise in neuropathology, digital pathology, molecular genetics, biochemistry, protein misfolding, proteomics, structural biology and cryogenic electron microscopy. The team is supported by experts in clinical neurology, protein misfolding and biostatistics, as well as by the Dementia Laboratory’s Brain Library. 

“The protein TDP-43 is central to the pathogenesis of half of all frontotemporal lobar degeneration cases. Finding out how TDP-43, when misfolded, gives rise to multiple proteinopathies is extremely important for the design of diagnostic and therapeutic compounds that will target pathologic TDP-43,” Newell said.

The project is called “Investigating the role of TDP-43 mislocalization, structure, and post-translational modifications in the neuropathologically heterogeneous TDP-43 proteinopathies.”

In addition to Newell, the other principal investigators are Laura Cracco, PhD, MS , assistant research professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at IU School of Medicine and Benjamin Ryskeldi-Falcon, PhD , group leader at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in the United Kingdom. This project is the first National Institutes of Health funded research for all three investigators as principal investigators.

About IU School of Medicine

The IU School of Medicine  is the largest medical school in the U.S. and is annually ranked among the top medical schools in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. The school offers high-quality medical education, access to leading medical research and rich campus life in nine Indiana cities, including rural and urban locations consistently recognized for livability. According to the Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research, the IU School of Medicine ranks No. 13 in 2023 National Institutes of Health funding among all public medical schools in the country.

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SNSF Advanced Grants

Grants for leading researchers

Submission deadline:

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• Timeline (PDF)
• Rebuttal letter (PDF) ; time window: 19-28 August (midnight) 2024

Please note: Researchers in Switzerland can participate in the European call for ERC Advanced Grants 2024. This change took effect with the opening of negotiations between Switzerland and the EU (Press release of the Confederation). The transitional measure “SNSF Advanced Grants 2024” will therefore not be launched.

Pre-registration deadline : 15.12.2023

Due to Switerland's status as a non-associated third country in the Horizon Europe programme, the federal government mandated the SNSF to launch the SNSF Advanced Grants 2023 funding scheme. It is aimed at researchers who intended to apply for an ERC Advanced Grant.

The scheme is open to all research disciplines and topics.

Scientists of any nationality who want to pursue innovative, high-risk research in Switzerland can apply for an SNSF Advanced Grant.

SNSF Advanced Grants are awarded up to a maximum of CHF 1.9 million for a period of up to 5 years.

Participation requirements

Applicants whose project was rejected in the first or second stage of the evaluation for SNSF Advanced Grants 2022 can submit an application for the SNSF Advanced Grants 2023 call. However, recently submitted and evaluated proposals will not be treated as resubmissions but as new applications. In addition, a researcher participating as principal investigator in an ongoing ERC frontier research grant project may not submit a proposal to the present SNSF Advanced Grants 2023 call, unless the ongoing project ends before the end of December 2025. An SNSF Advanced Grant can only start once the previous ERC frontier research grant agreement has ended.

You must have a track record of outstanding research over the past ten years and be recognised as a leader in your field. These benchmarks should be matched by at least one of the following indicators:

• Several significant peer-reviewed publications in a responsible role that had a major impact in the research field(s).
• Major research monographs (for research fields where monographs are the norm).
• A substantial record of invited presentation at well-established international conferences, organisation of international conferences, granted patents, outreach activities, general contributions to science, other artefacts with documented use.

Any documented career break during the last ten years should be clearly explained in the CV.

Please consider the following important points when preparing and submitting a proposal:

• Research plan
• CV and major scientific achievements
• Host institution commitment letter
• Research plan (Art. 5.1 Call Document) (PDF)
• Resources (Art. 5.2. Call Document) (PDF)
• CV (Art. 5.3 Call Document) (PDF)
• Major scientific achievements (Art. 5.3 Call Document) (PDF)
• Commitment of the host institution (Art. 5.4 Call Document) (PDF)
• Open access (Art. 2.4 Call Document) (PDF)

For more information about the documents for upload, refer to section 5 of the Call document. (PDF)

• (Art. 2.2 Call Document) (PDF)
• (Art. 4 Call Document) (PDF)

Uploading the proposal:

• (Art. 6 Call Document) (PDF)

Multiple proposals and duplicate funding:

• (Art. 1.1.2 Call Document) (PDF)

Eligible costs :

• (Art. 8.1 Call document) (PDF)

Evaluation procedure

A scientific steering committee, set up by the Presiding Board of the National Research Council, oversees the evaluation and funding activities related to the SNSF Advanced Grants call. It also ensures application of the SNSF’s best practices and compliance regarding conflicts of interest. The evaluation of the submitted proposals is based on the principle of competition. Discipline-specific panels will evaluate the proposals.

The applications are assessed taking into account the expert reviews and the rebuttal letters, and ranked comparatively to the other applications.

• Evaluation panels and external reviewers (Art. 7.1 Call document) (PDF)
• Evaluation procedure (Art. 7.2 Call document) (PDF)
• Evaluation criteria (Art. 7.3 Call document) (PDF)
• Evaluation form – SNSF Advanced Grants (PDF)
• Outcome and communication of decisions (Art. 7.4 Call document) (PDF)
• Scientific steering committee

Guidelines and regulations

Legal basis:

The general provisions of the SNSF apply to the SNSF Advanced Grants Calls 2023 :

• Funding Regulations (PDF)
• General Implementation Regulations (PDF)
• Call Document (PDF)

Ethics and integrity:

. Hence, please take note of the Swiss laws and ethical standards. Furthermore, the rules of scientific integrity must be respected.

Host institution:

The host institution must be established in Switzerland as a legal entity (public or private):

• (Art. 1.2 Call Document) (PDF)
• (Art. 3 Call Document) (PDF)

Transitional measures of the SNSF:

• Horizon Europe measures - update

Can I apply for SNSF AdG 2023 if I previously applied for SNSF AdG 2022?

Applicants whose project was rejected in the first or second stage of the evaluation for SNSF Advanced Grants 2022 can submit an application for the SNSF Advanced Grants 2023 call. However, recently submitted and evaluated proposals will not be treated as resubmissions but as new applications.

Can researchers with less than ten years of research experience apply for SNSF AdG 2023?

Researchers can apply for SNSF AdG 2023 even if they do not yet have ten years of research experience, regardless of the date of their PhD or PhD equivalent. All applicants should be active, established researchers and team leaders with an outstanding track record, which must be detailed in the application. For more information on the expected profile of applicants under SNSF AdG 2023, please refer to the call document.

Are only PhD holders eligible to apply for SNSF AdG 2023?

Yes, in principle an applicant should hold a PhD. Applicants without a PhD must generally have completed 3 years of research work (as their main job) since obtaining their higher education degree. Such research work will be regarded as equivalent to a PhD.

Can researchers from abroad also apply for SNSF AdG 2023?

Researchers from abroad can apply for SNSF AdG 2023. However, they must provide confirmation from their host institution stating that they will have a job of at least 50% (0.5 FTE) for the entire duration of the project, if the project is funded.

Can researchers submit an application if they plan to retire during the project period?

According to section 1.4 of the Funding Regulations (PDF) , eligibility to submit applications ends with the conferral of emeritus status or with retirement. Retired persons or persons with emeritus status continue to be eligible to submit applications if employment of at least 50% (0.5 FTE) at the Swiss research institution is guaranteed. The employment must cover the entire duration of the project, irrespective of the project start date.

Can several researchers submit a joint application?

SNSF AdGs 2023 are limited to one applicant.

How does pre-registration work and can applicants still make changes afterwards?

confirming completion of their pre-registration.

Do applicants need to submit additional documents (such as degree or birth certificate)?

It is sufficient to store the corresponding information in the appropriate data containers on mySNF.

When must the host institution commitment letter be submitted and who should sign it?

The host institution commitment letter must be submitted at the time of the final submission of the application, and not at the time of pre-registration. The document must be signed by a person who can legally represent the institution and thus authoritatively confirm the information in the host institution commitment letter (PDF) .

What is the page limit of the research plan?

Under the SNSF AdG 2023 call, the research plan should not exceed 14 pages (not including the bibliography).

Who can be considered as an external reviewer?

The SNSF makes every effort to ensure the high quality and international recognition of reviewers.

The SNSF currently pursues a policy of prioritising reviewers who are based outside Switzerland in order to reduce the risk of conflicts of interest in undertaking evaluations.

Should the applicant include a budget table and justification of resources in a separate document?

Under the SNSF AdG 2023 call, the requested budget needs to be entered in the data container “Requested budget” in mySNF (no specific budget table is required).

The justification of resources must be provided in a separate document (see Section 3.1 of the SNSF AdG call document (PDF) ) and uploaded to the mySNF data container “Research plan and resources”. All eligible costs must be in line with the aims of the project for its entire duration and fully justified. Project costs should be estimated as accurately as possible. The evaluation panels assess the estimated costs carefully and are entitled to reduce unjustified budgets items. The applicant should not include any description of resources or budget details in the scientific part of the application.

How is overhead calculated?

SNSF AdGs are awarded up to a maximum of CHF 1,900,000. Overhead is calculated separately and paid directly to the host institution in keeping with SNSF practices (see Section 3. of the SNSF AdG call document (PDF) ).

How are additional costs handled?

Applicants may request funding of up to CHF 870,000 over and above the maximum budget of CHF 1,900,000 as additional costs:

• for costs in connection with the move to Switzerland
• for the acquisition or use of scientific infrastructure/major equipment (these costs must be project-specific and not usable for other research groups); standard infrastructure and equipment are partially financed with overhead
• other major experimental and fieldwork costs, excluding personnel costs.

Additional costs may be requested regardless of whether the maximum budget has been reached.

Can applicants finance their own salary through the SNSF AdG?

Yes, this is possible.

Are there regulations on how much time applicants must spend working on the project?

Applicants are expected to dedicate a minimum of 30% of their working time to the project.

If I am awarded an SNSF AdG, will I still be able to apply for other SNSF grants?

Yes, holders of an SNSF AdG 2023 can submit proposals under other SNSF funding schemes (such as project funding or R’Equip), as long as the proposals address different topics and have different aims and methodologies.

Will evaluation of applications under SNSF AdG 2023 take place independently of ERC frontier research grants?

Evaluation of SNSF AdGs takes place independently of ERC frontier research grants.

Can applicants hold an SNSF AdG in parallel with an ERC frontier research grant?

Applicants can apply for SNSF AdG 2023 and for an ERC frontier research grant in parallel. Should both proposals be funded, the applicant would have to choose one project. Applicants have 12 months from the date of the decision letter to choose which project to pursue. In general, funding is not available for projects that have already been funded by the SNSF or third parties. Researchers who apply for SNSF AdG 2023 must inform the SNSF about any existing ERC frontier research grants and parallel applications for funding, as well as any thematic overlaps.

Researchers with an ongoing ERC frontier research grant may not submit a proposal to SNSF AdG 2023 unless the current project concludes before the end of December 2025. An SNSF AdG 2023 project can only start once the ERC frontier research grant has been completed.

How many parallel SNSF projects may applicants have?

SNSF Advanced Grants projects do NOT count towards the project funding limit, and can therefore be conducted in parallel with the other project grants. This list (PDF) shows which funding schemes are affected by the limit.

Projects running in parallel must have different subjects.

It is not possible to simultaneously receive an SNSF Advanced Grant and other grants in connection with the Horizon Europe transitional measures.

What is the success rate and the total budget allocated by the SNSF?

The funds allocated and the expected success rate are not communicated. However, the selection process will be very competitive, similar to the ERC frontier research grants.

When is the earliest and latest date a project can be started?

The earliest possible start date is 1 January 2025. The project start date can be postponed for up to 12 months after receipt of the decision.

What happens to my SNSF Advanced Grant if I am appointed to a higher education institution abroad?

Applications to transfer project funds from an SNSF Advanced Grant to move abroad (see also " Money follows Researcher" procedure ) are reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Salary components of the grantee are not remitted abroad. As a rule, such applications can only be submitted to the SNSF two years after the start of the grant.

Are the family allowances paid by the employer included in the maximum amount of the SNSF Advanced Grants instrument?

If you, as an employee, are entitled to family allowances paid by your employer that were granted before you submitted your application, the family allowances are not included in the maximum amount of CHF 1.9 million. Family allowances can be added to this cap.

If you become a parent during the evaluation or in the course of the grant, the SNSF will, upon written request, settle the negative balance at the end of the grant that arose due to the payment of the family allowance.