CYD Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowships will provide a salary and research and conference funds for up to two years, enabling fellows to complete a research project at the CYD Campus under the supervision of a professor at a higher education institution in Switzerland.
This program is highly competitive, and the primary evaluation criterion is excellence, as measured by academic records and professional accomplishments. Candidates applying for a CYD fellowship are expected to have excellent grade transcripts.
Mission
CYD Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowships are open to researchers at postdoctoral level who are willing to engage with cross-cutting issues in cyber-defence, with a particular emphasis on:
- Protection of confidentiality, integrity, and availability of cyber and cyber-physical systems.
- Information sharing, data fusion and crowdsourcing.
- Data science & AI methods for analysing cyber- and technology-relevant data.
- Security, privacy and digital trust technologies.
Eligibility requirements
- Citizens of any nationality may apply for the CYD Postdoctoral fellowships.
- No age restrictions apply.
- Applicants must have the endorsement of a professor employed at a Swiss higher education institution willing to supervise them when they submit their Stage 2 application (see Selection process).
- Applicants are only eligible to apply if they will conduct their postdoctoral research funded by a Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship in a different laboratory from the one of their doctoral and (if applicable) of their current postdoctoral research.
Funding
Eligible costs include and are limited to:
- Salary contribution (including social security benefits) based on the salary scale associated with the applicant’s position in the host institution.
- Research costs: a maximum amount of CHF 3’000.- per year can be granted for research costs (only for specific equipment needed for the project, not for general IT material).
- Conference costs: a maximum amount of CHF 5’000.- per year can be granted for conference costs.
Research and conference costs can be granted during the fellowship upon submission of a request with a justification for the funding.
How to apply
Please read carefully the application guidelines.
Explore the Application toolkit.
All required documents must be submitted on the online submission platform.
All documents must be submitted in English.
Deadline
The submission deadline for Stage 1 (see Selection process) will be 26 February 2025 (17:00 CET).
Selection process
The selection process includes two stages.
In Stage 1 the submitted applications will be evaluated by a CYD Campus internal committee chaired by the Director of the CYD Campus, based on the following criteria: the fit of the candidate with the CYD Campus and the fit of the candidate’s pre-proposal with the aims of the program.
Shortlisted applicants will be assigned a prospective CYD Campus mentor. This prospective mentor will interview the applicant to determine if he or she is willing to endorse the applicant for Stage 2. Only those applicants who are endorsed by their prospective CYD Campus mentor will be able to proceed to Stage 2.
In Stage 2, short-listed applicants will be required to submit a full research proposal before the submission deadline on 9 April 2025.
Final decisions will be made by a committee chaired by the Director of the CYD Campus and composed of 3-5 members representing the CYD Campus and Swiss higher education institutions. They will be announced by end of May 2025.