Scientific researchers celebrate record year
The Swiss National Science Foundation last year handed out a record SFr707 million ($607 million) to 2,900 scientific research projects.
This was six per cent up on 2008, said the foundation in its annual report, published on Tuesday in Bern.
It added that the number of applications for research grants had risen dramatically. As a result, competition for funds was tighter than ever and it was having to turn down more and more projects which it would have liked to support.
Thirty-eight per cent of the SFr707 million went towards biology and medicine, 37 per cent to mathematics and engineering, and 25 per cent to the social sciences and the humanities.
The Swiss National Science Foundation is the most important Swiss agency promoting scientific research. It supports, as mandated by the government, all disciplines, from philosophy and biology to the nanosciences and medicine.
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