Call for FAN Awards 2025

The FAN Awards for early career researchers at UZH give recognition to the outstanding scientific achievements.

Three prizes are awarded for research projects of societal relevance and applying inter- or transdisciplinary approaches or methods in the areas of Arts and Social Sciences, Law and Economics and Medicine and Sciences.

Call for Mentoring Awards 2025 completed – overview of Awardees 2025.

The following call 2025 serves as reference

► Nomination process stage 1

All professors are invited to propose one qualified early career researcher to their respective faculty. Applications can be submitted to the respective dean's office:

Applications include:

• One-page summary of the project highlighting the most important results
• Short description of how the five criteria mentioned above are fulfilled
• 1-2 page CV of the candidate including a list of publications, the e-mail address and the phone number 

The documents can be submitted in either German or English.

► Nomination process stage 2

Thereafter, each faculty nominates 1-2 candidates to the Graduate Campus. In the case of two nominations, at least one has to be a female nominee. The nomination documents should include a supporting statement of the Dean of the respective faculty.

Based on the application documents, the jury will invite the selected nominees to briefly present their projects in January 2025. Afterwards the jury will decide on the award winners.

Societal relevance

We consider socially relevant research not only as applied research, but above all as the investigation of topic areas related to pertinent issues and challenges of our society.

Inter- or transdisciplinarity approaches

We refer to the following definition of interdisciplinarity which includes also transdisciplinary research: «Interdisciplinary research (IDR) is a mode of research by teams or individuals that integrates information, data, techniques, tools, perspectives, concepts, and/or theories from two or more disciplines or bodies of specialized knowledge to advance fundamental understanding or to solve problems whose solutions are beyond the scope of a single discipline or area of research practice.» Source: Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research (2004), National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering and Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, The National Academies Press 306, Washington, D.C., p. 188.