Research Grants are awarded to support medical and dental students, licentiates and doctors in their research work.
The grant is intended to fund full-time research work for a period of 6, 12 or 24 months. Professors and docents are considered senior researchers and are therefore not eligible to apply. A research grant may be awarded to the same applicant twice.
The research grants available for doctoral researchers are €13,500, €27,000, or €54,000, and for postdoctoral researchers €15,000, €30,000, or €60,000. The grants can be used to support research periods of varying lengths; for example, a grant of 27,000 euros provides funding for a doctoral researcher for a period of 12 months. The highest-rated applications are given priority when awarding the largest grants.
Grants are primarily paid in the calendar year following the grant being awarded. Payments are made in January, March, August, and October.
The grant may be paid either as a personal, tax-free scholarship or as a salary through the host institution. The applicants specify their research schedule in the application; the grant period does not need to be continuous but can be split in several periods. Eligibility for a tax-free scholarship requires full-time research work during the grant period. If the grant is paid as a scholarship, the recipient must arrange pension insurance with Mela (Social Insurance Institution).
At the applicant’s request, the grant may also be paid to their host institution for onward payment to the recipient as a salary. In this case, applicants must provide a commitment from their employer, such as a university or hospital. The employer will then handle tax withholding and pension contributions on behalf of the applicant. The salary level corresponds to the applicant’s current base salary, and the research work may also be conducted part-time.
Research Grant recipients must write a report describing how the grant was used. This report must be completed by the end of the year after the research period has ended. The report will describe periods of time spent on full-time research, the research subject, the research’s primary achievements and information about the research being published. Reporting forms can be found in our Grant Service.