Emma – on her way to a professorship?
Using Emma* as an example, we profile the career path of an early career researcher whose PhD was financed by an SNSF project. To this end, we combined and analysed data from the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) and the SNSF. *Emma is a pseudonym.
On behalf of the federal government, the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) promotes scientific research in a wide range of disciplines using a variety of funding schemes. One of the central goals of this support is to improve the career prospects of early career researchers. The SNSF invests fully a quarter of its budget in career support for talented early career researchers. Many early career researchers are also employed in other projects funded by the SNSF. In 2018, for example, 23% of assistants and research associates at Swiss universities (a total of 22,503 full-time equivalents) were financed by the SNSF.