From combating ethnic division to hereditary disease: support for groundbreaking research

© Constantine Johnny

Ways of combating ethnic division, improvements to self-driving cars and environment-friendly agriculture: with its largest funding scheme, the SNSF is supporting 403 key research projects with a total of 314 million Swiss francs.

Digitalisation is changing our everyday lives. Self-driving cars are already in use today, for example, as are care robots. With his project, Alexandre Alahi (EPFL) aims to develop innovative and versatile models that accurately and reliably predict people’s movements. In particular, the models should be able to effectively recognise several objects at the same time and anticipate the behaviour of each of them. These features would make the interaction of autonomous systems with humans safer – for instance when used in self-driving cars or in social robots.

Some 1,000 projects evaluated

This project has become a reality thanks to the SNSF’s support: It is one of 403 research projects that the SNSF is financing under its project funding scheme (the evaluation presented here does not include Weave and Lead Agency projects). A call for proposals is issued twice a year for this major funding scheme. A total of 1,036 projects were evaluated in the course of last spring’s call. Just under 40 per cent of these were approved and will receive total funding of 313.9 million Swiss francs over the coming years. In terms of research domain, 35 per cent of the projects are in life sciences and 27 per cent in mathematics, informatics, natural sciences and technology (MINT). These are followed by projects in the social sciences and humanities (25%) and interdisciplinary projects (13%).

Slight decrease in the proportion of women

More than half of the researchers receiving funding work at universities (54 per cent), with a quarter working at institutions in the ETH Domain. The percentage of researchers working at universities of applied sciences, universities of teacher education and other institutions declined, after having risen in the last two calls. Having last reached 16 per cent, it is now just under 9 per cent.

The proportion of women has also declined slightly. Just under 31 per cent of successful applications were submitted by women (compared with 32 per cent in the last call). Compared to the previous year, the proportion of women has fallen in all research domains except MINT. In the latter, at 25 per cent, it is higher than in any recent year.

The next call for project funding is already underway, and the submission deadline for new applications is 1 April 2025.

Further examples of funded projects

Social sciences and humanities

  • How do people perceive dialects in Germany, Austria and Switzerland? Why do they find some attractive, friendly or intelligent, but others arrogant? These are the questions that Adrian Leemann and Erez Levon from the University of Bern are investigating. They hope to show which regional sound features of dialects affect perceptions and how they can lead to prejudices. The knowledge obtained could help combat discrimination against language groups.
  • In July 2025, Bosnia and Herzegovina will be commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide. Sandra Penic from the University of Geneva is investigating whether such rituals can help prevent further ethnic polarisation in deeply divided communities in the aftermath of conflicts. By developing and testing various psychological interventions, the researcher hopes to identify the most effective approaches that societies can adopt to guard against ethnic division.

Mathematics, informatics, natural sciences and technology

  • Researchers at ETH Zurich, the University of Zurich and EPFL are working with colleagues from France to investigate equal distribution in number theory. The project is providing insights into the interplay of order and disorder within natural arithmetical structures. In other words, the researchers are investigating the existence or otherwise of patterns in distribution problems in number theory. The results could lead to significant breakthroughs – not just in number theory, but also in other fields of mathematics.

Life sciences

  • Primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD) is a little-researched genetic disease. It affects the airways and various organs in addition to impacting the mental wellbeing of those affected. Myrofora Goutaki wants to gain a better understanding of the course of the disease, the effects that PCD has on the mental state of patients and the stress that they experience as a result of medical treatment. Her project at the University of Bern is of great importance for the treatment of people living with this rare disease.
  • Fungi coexist closely with trees, supplying them with water and nutrients via their roots. As such, they are important for the resilience of forests. Klaus Schläppi’s project at the University of Basel sheds light on the role played by these fungi in deep soil layers. He hopes to gain fresh insights into the vital functions that fungi perform and a better understanding of the role of this symbiotic relationship for forest health.

Interdisciplinary projects

  • Synthetic fungicides are the preferred treatment for fungal crop diseases because they are more effective than the more environmentally friendly microbial plant protection products. Saskia Bindschedler (University of Neuchâtel), Natacha Bodenhausen (Research Institute of Organic Agriculture) and Alexandra Kämpfer-Homsy (University of Applied Sciences of Western Switzerland) are pursuing a new approach to combat soil-borne fungal pathogens using biological methods based on the interaction between bacteria and fungi and microfluidics. They are planning to conduct field trials and aim to initiate a dialogue between researchers and producers to ensure that solutions that will be feasible in real-world use are available.
  • Spina bifida (“open spine”) is the most common congenital defect affecting the central nervous system. It can subsequently result in delayed development and restricted sub-lesion motor skills. Andras Jakab and the clinical team at the Spina Bifida Centre at University Children's Hospital Zurich want to use imaging techniques to investigate the spectrum of neurocognitive impairments caused by spina bifida. They are particularly interested in how the results obtained with imaging techniques correlate with clinical findings such as brain development disorders and the specific neurocognitive development profile in spina bifida.