Eligible Costs

I. Personnel costs

Please refer to WWTF's regulation on personnel costs as guide in the submission process.

Personnel categories

Applications for personnel costs must be in one of the following categories:

• • Senior Personnel: highly qualified scientists/technicians, usually permanently employed
  • Post Doc: or equivalent qualification, including Senior Postdocs
  • PhD Student: or equivalent qualification level
  • Diploma Student: Bachelor or Master students
  • Office/Technician: administrative or technicians

Regulations for permanently employed scientific senior staff: Personnel costs cannot be claimed for permanent senior staff who are already fully financed by the institution. Exceptions apply in cases where senior staff must acquire third party funding for co-financing their own position (e.g., non-university research institutions and Universities of Applied Sciences). In these cases, permanently employed senior staff may claim up to 20% of their annual salary from WWTF.

Regulations for permanently employed administrative IT staff: Due to the nature of this call which prioritizes technology development / implementation over basic research, resources can be allocated to IT staff. Given the duration of the potential projects (max. 48 months) and the scarce labor market for IT staff, the employment of temporary IT personnel is challenging. Hence, permanently employed IT staff may claim up to 20% of their annual salary from WWTF.  

Forms of employment and salaries

• Eligible forms of employment contracts are full-time and part-time working contracts as well as marginal employments (“Arbeitsvertrag”).

• All persons employed through a WWTF-funded project should receive a fair employment contract. For wages / minimum wages see WWTF regulations for personnel costs. 
• Salaries higher than those stipulated in the collective agreement are possible, subject to the agreement from the host institution and justification based on qualifications of the researcher. 

Inflation adjustment for planning purposes

The budget calculation for salaries in the Funding Portal automatically includes an increase of 3.5% p.a. for the duration of the project for planning purposes.

Non-personnel costs

Please refer to WWTF's regulation on non-personnel costs as guide in the application process!

Please note that the following regulation changed on October 23, 2025:

Originally, non-personnel costs must not exceed 30% of the overall costs. As the projects have a high demand of external services, the solution was, that Werkverträge would have been counted as personnel costs. This regulation is not longer valid. 

New regulation: Non-personnel costs should not exceed 70% of the overall budget. As a consequence: Werkverträge/Service contracts are not counted as personnel costs. Please enter Wertverträge and alike in the non-personnel costs table. 

Categories for eligible non-personelle costs are: 

• Equipment
• Consumables
• Travel costs
• Publication costs
• Workshop/conferences
• other: for costs that do not fall into the categories above

Non-personnel costs should not exceed 70% of the overall budget.