The ETH Postdoctoral Fellowship Programme, known as ETH Fellows, is run by the Grants Office of ETH Zurich and brings incoming postdoctoral researchers to the university for two years. Fellows are paid a full ETH salary and control their own research allowance while working in the group of a host professor in Zurich. No research field is excluded, and no nationality, age or gender bar applies. The programme is explicitly a mobility scheme: candidates who have spent long stretches of the past three years in Switzerland, or at ETH itself, are ineligible. Calls close twice a year, on 1 March and 1 September, and ETH reports a success rate of roughly 15–20% in recent rounds.
Benefits & funding
- Salary at 100% for the full two years, set by ETH standards for postdoctoral researchers; the published rates include the 15% social security contributions ETH pays on top.
- CHF 12,000 per year for research expenses, including travel and mobility allowances and research cost contributions.
- A two-year appointment that cannot be prolonged, held inside an established ETH research group with the institute’s facilities.
- ETH postdoctoral salaries are fixed-rate and step up automatically after the first year; staff with children in education also receive a family allowance.
Eligibility
- A doctorate (PhD or Doctor of Sciences) in hand at the submission deadline, or one that will be obtained within the following six months.
- Applicants who already hold the doctorate must have been awarded it no more than two years before the submission deadline.
- At least one scientific publication in a peer-reviewed journal, or a prize awarded for the doctoral thesis.
- Applicants who resided or carried out their main activity — work, studies or similar — in Switzerland for more than twelve months in the three years before the deadline are not eligible.
- Applicants whose main activity was at ETH Zurich, EPF Lausanne, PSI, WSL, Empa, Eawag or the University of Zurich for more than six months in those three years are not eligible.
- A host professor at ETH with a guaranteed position of at least 50% for the whole fellowship must agree to host the fellow; each professor may host only one fellow per evaluation round.
- Open to all nationalities and all research areas; no age limit and no years-of-work-experience requirement are stated.
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Application process
- 1Find an ETH host professor and secure their agreement; assistant professors must contact the Grants Office before a submission goes ahead.
- 2Download the two project description templates and prepare the CV following the published instructions; convert every document to PDF without password protection.
- 3Register on the eResearch platform and complete all mandatory fields of the application form.
- 4Add the host professor in the form, which automatically requests their invitation letter.
- 5Add two external reference providers, who send their letters directly to the Grants Office at least ten days before the deadline.
- 6Validate and submit the application by 17:00 Swiss local time on 1 March or 1 September; if the date falls on a weekend, the deadline moves to the following Monday at 17:00.
- 7Shortlisted candidates take a video interview of about fifteen minutes before final decisions are made.
Program timeline
Application deadline, 17:00 Swiss local time
Sep 1, 2026
Within two months of the deadline
interview invitations sent
About four months after the deadline
final funding decisions communicated
Within eight months of the deadline
fellowship must start, always on the first day of a month
Next submission deadline in the twice-yearly cycle
Mar 1, 2027