Discovery: 190 project proposals submitted
The first stage of the call was a huge success: researchers submitted more than 290 letters of intent by the deadline on 27 February 2017. 190 of those submitted a full proposal by 10 April 2017.
As a result of the high demand, the evaluation period was extended by two months, to allow for a fair evaluation process. The earliest starting date was therefore also pushed back by two months. To increase the available budget, it was decided to combine the budgets earmarked for the first two calls. All the same, it is expected that the success rate will be low at 6 to 8%. Because of these adjustments, there will not be a second BRIDGE Discovery call in 2017.
Statistics of the first call
Discovery projects can be submitted by individuals or small consortia of up to three applicants. In total, 119 proposals were submitted by consortia. 38% of all applicants work in the ETH domain, 27% at a university of higher education and 28% at a university. Over a third of the applications propose innovations in the area of the life sciences (35%); among the other important areas of research are engineering with 25% and micro- and nanotechnology with 19%.
Next steps
The panel of experts will evaluate the proposals by November 2017. The selected projects will get underway as of December 2017. The next call for proposals of BRIDGE Discovery will be launched at the beginning of 2018.