Call for ETH4D Humanitarian Action Challenges (HAC) Grants 2024 is open now!!!
The goal of the ETH4D Humanitarian Action Challenges is to support project-based research between ETH Zurich researchers and EPFL researchers and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to leverage science and technology for a greater impact of humanitarian action.
Researchers submitting an application for the Humanitarian Action Challenges are strongly encouraged to review these ICRC priority areas.
Despite unprecedented progress in poverty reduction over the last 25 years, around 800 million people still live on less than two dollars per day, without adequate access to food, drinking water, electricity, mobility, and other basic services.
At the same time, many countries struggling with extreme poverty are currently among the most dynamic economies in the world, creating new opportunities to use innovative approaches to address social and environmental challenges.
The rapid expansion of mobile phone technology and solar energy have had tremendous impacts on development over the past ten years. Now technologies such as digitization, 3D-printing, block chain, remote sensing, and robotics might offer the same promise.
However, much of the potential of technological innovation for addressing the persistent challenges of those in poverty remains untapped. ETH4D believes that universities have a responsibility to ensure that technological progress benefits the global population.
ETH4D aims to combine technological innovation with a profound understanding of people’s behavior and their environments to identify new solutions for improving the lives of poor people. ETH4D therefore supports research, which combines the knowledge and skills of engineering, the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities and promotes the collaboration between scientific research, civil society, industry and policy.
ETH4D aims to educate the future leaders of sustainable development. ETH4D will train a new generation of engineers and natural scientists able to develop, implement and scale world-changing innovations with a global perspective.
Location:
SwitzerlandBenefits
- Grant Sum: 50 – 300 kCHF
- Matching Funds: The main applicant and potential co-applicants from the ETH domain (excluding EPFL) must provide matching funds corresponding to at least 25% of the requested grant. Matching funds can come from third-parties or professorship reserves. Staff costs of doctoral students, post-docs and research assistants in Switzerland that are not funded by the grant count as matching funds.
Eligibilities
- Proposals need to address a clearly defined research question that has the objective of increasing the impact of humanitarian action. Humanitarian Action Challenges must develop, test, evaluate or implement an innovative product, policy or service – involving a technology that responds to a specific humanitarian challenge.
- The team must consist of at least one main applicant from ETH who holds a PhD, and at least one partner from the ICRC.
- It is encouraged (but not mandatory) to have one partner from a low- or lower-middle-income country, one from EPFL (which allows for a parallel external page submission) or a partner from another humanitarian organisation.
- Partners from the rest of the ETH Domain (PSI, WSL, Empa, and Eawag) are welcome to join as co-applicants.
- If the main applicant is not an ETH professor, a letter of commitment by the ETH host professor or head of the unit, indicating their financial contribution to the project, must accompany the proposal.
Application Process
Application documents:
- Completed application form
- Bibliography
- Work packages and Milestones shown in a Gantt-Chart.
- Budget which must include matching funds.
- Letter of support from the ICRC, showcasing long-term commitment to the project and signed by both the ICRC project manager and the ICRC project sponsor (typically head of unit). The letter should clearly articulate the question to be addressed in the project, its relevance to the organization, and the contributions (staff time and/or financial, if applicable) the partner is willing to make to the project.
- CV of all involved partners (max. 2 pages per person).
- Please consult the Humanitarian Action Challenges Guidelines before applying.
- All application documents must be written in English and must be submitted electronically (in one single PDF file) in the online form below.
Application Deadline: March 21, 2024
Application ClosedOfficial link
