Starting next January, the Czech Science Foundation (GACR) will fund seventeen new JUNIOR STAR projects. The highly selective tender is aimed at excellent early-career scientists coming to the Czech Republic from abroad or with significant international experience. With an exceptional funding amount of CZK 25 million for 5 years, the scientists will be able to build new scientific teams and focus on new areas of research.
“The JUNIOR STAR scheme is a unique opportunity for early-career scientists to gain scientific independence and enrich the Czech environment with new research topics. The interest in these grants is enormous. However, we can only afford to fund the best of the best,” said GACR President Prof. Petr Baldrian. “This is the fourth year of this grant scheme. We are delighted that it allows us to attract scientists from prestigious universities abroad to work for Czech science. These are, for example, scientists working in the U.S., the United Kingdom, Norway or Germany. We believe that the researchers have the potential to answer important questions in their field of research and build new teams that will enrich Czech science.”
Projects in all areas of basic research are eligible for funding. Scientists in the new projects will focus, for example, on accelerating drug development, optimising 3D printing of alloys, computer vision using neural networks, and the impact of bilingualism in the first year of human life.
JUNIOR STAR 2024 Projects
Announcement of the results of the JUNIOR STAR – 2024 (pdf)
JUNIOR STAR grants are evaluated exclusively by international scientists who guarantee the expertise and objectivity of the evaluation. Each project receives four reviews from members of the international discipline committees and additional ones from external reviewers, on the basis of which the evaluation panels propose the best projects for funding.
The publication of the results of the Standard Projects and POSTDOC INDIVIDUAL FELLOWSHIP tenders will take place on 30 November 2023.