Grants and Writing Resources for University of Zurich

On the Tag der Lehre in November 2025, 68 UZH students received a Semesterpreis for outstanding seminar papers from the autumn 2024 and spring 2025 semesters, each worth CHF 600. Lab work earns prizes as well. Ten biology and biomedicine students took a gold medal and the Best Sustainable Development Impact award at the 2024 iGEM competition for RhyzUp, a bacterium modified to produce extra biofilm that protects plant roots.

Prizes for Student Work

Each semester the faculties put forward outstanding semester papers for a Semesterpreis of CHF 600. The prizes are shared out among the faculties in proportion to their student numbers and presented once a year at the Tag der Lehre, UZH's teaching day.

The Jahrespreise are larger. Every faculty can propose one outstanding piece of academic work or one dissertation per calendar year, and each prize carries CHF 5,000, presented by the Rector at the Dies academicus. The university's list of prizes also includes a CHF 5,000 Team-Effort-Preis for special commitment by staff or students.

Funding for Doctoral Researchers

The UZH Candoc Grant pays mainly salary, buying protected time for a dissertation project, for up to 24 months in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and up to 12 months in the other faculties. Doctoral students enrolled at UZH can also apply for UZH Doc.Mobility, which covers living costs and a travel allowance for six to twelve months of dissertation work at an institute abroad. The research office keeps a full list of PhD funding, including the FAN Awards for advanced PhD candidates and early postdocs.

Shorter trips go through the Graduate Campus. GRC Travel Grants of CHF 120 to CHF 4,900 cover conferences, fieldwork, research stays and summer or winter schools; all early career researchers may apply, with priority for advanced doctoral researchers and postdocs. Advanced doctoral researchers and postdocs can also seek GRC Short Grants and Career Grants, worth CHF 500 to 5,000 and CHF 5,000 to 15,000.

Presenting and Publishing

The Graduate Campus runs a Three Minute Thesis competition, where each speaker explains their research to a general audience in three minutes. Fourteen presenters are listed for the 2026 round. First place in the jury vote earns CHF 700 and a place in the Universitas 21 3MT final, with CHF 500 for the runner-up and CHF 300 for the audience favourite.

The University Library's HOPE platform hosts 24 open-access journals for UZH researchers. One of them, Bothros, was started by early-career researchers and publishes papers from SAFT, a student archaeology conference. For articles in outside journals, the library pays publication charges for UZH researchers in full or in part under its publisher agreements, and a UZH Publication Fund for Humanities and Social Sciences supports open-access work in those fields.

Writing Consultations

The Academic Communication Center at the Language Center of UZH and ETH Zurich offers writing consultations free to all UZH and ETH students and staff. Sessions last 45 minutes, run online, and are led by a lecturer who comments on language, organization and clarity. You can book up to two a semester for academic writing in English or German, grant writing in English, or support in French or Italian.

Groups planning a writing retreat can ask the same center for retreat support. It offers planning sessions beforehand, half-day workshops on topics the group picks, feedback on texts and coaching during or after the retreat.

If you'd like an editor's eye on a thesis chapter or a research paper before it goes out, we can help. See our University of Zurich dissertation and thesis editing page, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.