Attractive career opportunities for doctoral students help them gain a foothold in promising research fields – doc.funds grants strengthen doctoral training programs in Austria. The program facilitates scientific or arts-based education and training for doctoral students in existing structured doctoral programs. It helps universities sustainably reinforce their educational and training programs in the long term and provide junior researchers with excellent working conditions.

Target group
The funding program is aimed at all Austrian research institutions entitled to grant doctoral degrees, where at least 5 researchers or arts-based researchers join to form a consortium to implement a project.

Funding goals
The main objective is to support excellent research or arts-based research training for doctoral students in existing doctoral programs that have been in place for at least 2 years.
In the long term, it is intended to contribute to reinforcing research orientation and to consolidating existing education and training structures for highly qualified junior researchers.

Funding period and funding amount
Personnel costs for 5 to 10 doctoral candidates plus training costs of up to €5,000 per doctoral candidate position per year for a total of 4 years

Approval
Late November 2024 by the FWF Scientific Board based on the recommendation of the international doc.funds jury; recommendations are made on the basis of an international peer review and hearings
Recommendations are prepared in the doc.funds jury meeting on November 14 and 15, 2023