Information for ETH professors

The ETH Foundation primarily prioritises projects that are referred by ETH Zurich’s Executive Board. As a result, it cannot accept direct applications from professors or principal investigators (PI) to support their research.

However, researchers and teaching staff at ETH Zurich are very welcome to reach out to the ETH Foundation at any time in case of questions or if you have exciting news to share with regard to your research.

Many donors have an interest in specific subjects that are not covered or only partially covered by the official funding projects. This often leads to unexpected funding opportunities, where the ETH Foundation will be happy to approach you as a PI.

The focus of the funding provided by the ETH Foundation is on teaching and research at ETH Zurich. As a rule, the ETH Foundation and its donors do not fund running costs, deficit guarantees or costs for one-off events.

If you are considering approaching the ETH Foundation for funding for a research or teaching project, we recommend that you contact Dr Jürg Brunnschweiler, Chief of Staff to the President of ETH Zurich (juerg.brunnschweiler@sl.ethz.ch).

Use the factsheet below to outline the key facts about your project so that an efficient assessment can be made.

The ETH Foundation can take care of all administrative work associated with a donation, in particular processing the transaction, investment and managing relations with the donors.

In doing so, we also ensure that the donations are made in accordance with ETH Zurich’s guidelines.

The basic principles covering donations at ETH Zurich are set out in the following documents:

• Code of conduct of ETH Zurich on dealing with contributions
• ETH Zurich Foundation Code of Conduct

The most important thing is that our academic principles are not compromised by any donations that are made – whether to a project or an individual. This means:

• Freedom of research, teaching and publication is assured at all times.
• Donations do not confer on the donors any right of ownership or entitle them to publish or make use of the research findings.
• The autonomy and independence of ETH Zurich remain untouched, i.e. aside from specifying the purpose of their donation, donors have no influence, particularly with regard to staffing and procurement decisions taken by ETH.

A distinction is to be made between donations and research contracts that are agreed between researchers at ETH Zurich and industry. Negotiating these contracts is the responsibility of ETH transfer.