News

Slovakia opens the door for excellent scientists from all over the world. Today, SAS opened a call for applications for the IMPULZ 2024 grant programme. Internationally recognized scientists and highly talented young researchers once again have the opportunity to achieve their scientific goals in Slovakia, under conditions reaching prestigious European grants. Selected projects will be able to apply for funds of up to EUR 160,000 per year. The call is open until September 2, 2024, the expected commencement of projects is in April 2025.

The Slovak Academy of Sciences launches the IMPULZ grant scheme for the fourth time. Its goal is to attract a new generation of high-quality scientific leaders to SAS research facilities, increase their internationalization and competitiveness, the excellence of research and, last but not least, success in obtaining prestigious European grants.

"SAS needs to look for new talented scientists with topics at the frontier of knowledge. The goal is to find young people, who will also be able to apply for ERC projects, which are considered the most important in the scientific and research area," emphasizes the President of the SAS, Prof. Pavol Šajgalik.

The task of the researchers will be to create and manage their own research groups. The scheme will provide them with incentive conditions for their development and will bring research organizations an improvement in the research environment and scientific outputs.

Scientists with a PhD degree or an equivalent degree who regularly publish in important scientific journals, have been repeatedly invited to present their results at important international conferences, and have been the leading researcher of a scientific project can apply for the grant.  Applicants must also demonstrate sufficient research experience gained at a foreign research institute.  Either they obtained a PhD degree or completed a long-term stay outside Slovakia, usually not shorter than 2 years. In the case of young researchers, the applicants must prove autonomy from the thesis advisor by providing a list of publications which were not co-authored by the advisor. The proposed topic of the project must be different from the topic of the applicant's thesis.

Successful applicants can receive a grant of up to EUR 160,000 per year. Eligible project costs include personnel costs, travel costs, material costs, research infrastructure, publishing costs, etc. The selected applicants will be employed by a SAS research institute, which will provide funding for the indirect project costs.                                                

SAS currently provides specific support for researchers through several programmes, such as Compensation Contribution, the Štefan Schwarz Support Fund and SASPRO2/MoRePro. Multiple support from several programmes is not possible.

SAS opened the IMPULZ grant scheme for the first time in 2021. Since its beginning, 79 applicants from all over the world have applied for the grant scheme. SAS has so far supported nine projects with a total amount of EUR 1,637,664.

Information about the IMPULZ Programme and the full wording of the call can be found at: http://impulz.sav.sk.

Edited by Monika Tináková