Submission Guideline
This application must be submitted by the early career researcher. In order to submit the proposal, WWTF requires a letter of intent (LOI) from the host institution and a signature from the authorising person at the Viennese institution involved (either host or home institution).

Register & Login
Register 
Go to https://fundingportal.wwtf.at/
Go to “Register” in the top menu
Enter your registration data (*indicates mandatory fields)
You will receive an email to confirm registration.
Please complete your profile as early as possible because your profile information is used in the other parts of the proposals.
Login
Go to https://fundingportal.wwtf.at/
Login with your credentials

Create a new proposal
Go to “Calls” in the top menu
Select the ME/CFS Call 2026 "ME/CFS Fellowships" Call
Click “Create new proposal” à a new proposal will be created. Please note that a maximum of one application per applicant is permitted in this call.
Once created, you will find your application under “My Proposals & Roles” in the top menu. You can delete your application at any time. Applications that are not submitted will be deleted automatically after the submission deadline.
The Funding Portal will save your entries and changes automatically. You can pause data entry at any time. All information will be available again upon your next login.

Provide your personal data
Step 1: Go to “Personnel and Institutions”
Please click “I am the Applicant” (= you will then be named Principal Investigator and Coordinator)
Add the name of your intended host institution
Upload the letter of intent as PDF (max number of 2 pages allowed)
Step 2: Complete your “Profile”
Applicants need to complete the section “My Profile”. 
Go to the tab “My Profile” in the top menu to fill out or update your profile. This information needs to be entered only once.
Please upload or update your CV based on the template provided: wwtf_cvtemplate_project.docx
This is a standardized CV for WWTF projects. Please delete the section not relevant for your application accordingly.
Step 3: Complete your “Role”
Under “My Roles”, click on your role below the title of the proposal.Go to “My Proposal & Roles” in the top menu. You can update the personal information by clicking on “Refresh from profile”. The system will check if there is new information in “My Profile” and update this section accordingly.
Select your staff category. Following staff categories are allowed:
Postdoc
PhD Candidate
MA/BA Student
Select the Home affiliation with which you want to apply for the proposal.
Check the box under “Affirmation” to confirm acknowledgement of and compliance with guidelines from WWTF and additional relevant organisations. 

Curriculum Vitae and List of Publications
Please use the CV template provided. This is the correct template:"All other calls: wwtf_cvtemplate_project.docx". Please remove or rename the categories not relevant for your application
Do not exceed 2 pages for the CV, as the system will not accept the upload of documents longer than 2 pages
List all items in reverse chronological order. 
For each of the selected publications (max. 10), provide 1-2 sentences outlining the relevance of the publication for the proposal.
If possible, please also provide a link to a more detailed list of your publications. This may be your institutional website, personal website, an ORCID profile, Google Scholar profile, etc.
Describe additional qualifications or skills that are relevant for the success of the project. These may extend beyond scientific skills to experience in leadership, supervision, Open Science, etc.

Fill out the proposal
The proposal can be accessed under"My Proposals and Roles" in the top right menu. 
The proposal is comprised of five chapters (each under a tab):
Basic Information
Personnel and Institutions
Project
Budget
Signatures
A chapter with a red alert symbol indicates that it is incomplete. Within the marked chapter, click on the red symbol(s) beside individual sections to highlight the fields requiring attention.  A green checkmark symbol indicates that the information in the chapter is complete. 
Please note that the symbols might not refresh immediately even if the information in the chapter is complete. Changing to another chapter and going back to the other will refresh the symbol. 

Chapters to fill out
Basic Information
This chapter contains basic information about the proposal, including title, scientific disciplines involved, keywords and duration.
Please note:
Scientific Disciplines: Fields will be suggested as you type. WWTF uses the ÖFOS classification system of Statistik Austria.
Personnel and Institutions
This chapter contains information about the applicant and the host institution
Applicant: Information will be transferred from your Role
Host institution
Letter of intent
Project
In this chapter, details about the Fellowship will be asked
Lay summary of your Fellowship activities: Please provide a description of your Fellowship that is suitable for the general public. This will primarily be used by WWTF for communicating your work to non-experts for fundraising and public relations purposes. (1,000 characters)
Scientific description of your Fellowship activities: Please provide a concise scientific abstract of the project. (2,000 characters)
Expertise: This section should primarily focus on you as the researcher, demonstrating your capability, maturity, and suitability for the proposed fellowship. What key skills and knowledge do you currently possess that are essential for successfully executing the fellowship? How does your past experience and current expertise specifically prepare you to perform your work during the time of the fellowship? (5,000 characters)
Workplan: Reflect on (1) What do you want to achieve, (2) Why the work you will do during your fellowship is important for your field and (3) What specific new research methods, techniques, or tools will you be able to acquire or master during the fellowship? What is the timeline for your fellowship? (7,000 characters)
Career Aspects: How does the fellowship fit into your long-term academic goals? How do you expect this fellowship to accelerate your career trajectory and your professional network? (5,000 characters)
Ethical considerations: Indicate if ethical approval of an ethics committee or institutional review board is required for the project. If so, please describe the potential ethical aspects and upload the ethical approval(s) as a single PDF. There is no page limit for the approvals, but the document may not exceed 10 MB. If no ethical aspects are identified, please provide a brief statement. (500 characters).
Please note that potential sex/gender aspects of the research topic and should be considered throughout the application (see “Call Specifications” document). These should be briefly described where appropriate in the relevant sections. 
If ethical approval has already been obtained, please upload the appropriate documents. In case a new ethical approval is pending, an acknowledgement of receipt from the ethics committee/institutional review board must be submitted with the proposal. The final approval (“Votum”) must be submitted to WWTF at latest before the start of the fellowship.
Data Management: We encourage applicants to consider and briefly address the following points as appropriate (500 characters):
What kind of accompanying metadata and documentation will help others identify, discover, reuse, and/or reproduce the research data?
How will data for sharing and preservation be selected?
When will data be shared?
In which repositories will data be archived? How long will data be retained?
What persistent identifiers (e.g., DOI) and usage licenses (e.g., CC BY) will be used?
Use of generative AI (max. 500 characters)
Please describe if and how GenAI has been used in developing your research proposal. Please see further details here.
Budget
Please note the following guidelines for the budget:
Non-personnel costs should not exceed 30% of the total requested budget.
The complete budget will be transferred to the research institution in Vienna (Host or Home institution). 
Due to the budget size for the Fellowship, WWTF does not pay overheads in this call
Before filling out the budget, please ensure that all information relating to your profile, your role in the project, and the host institution has been completed. If this information is incomplete, neither you nor your host institution will be shown.
Personnel costs
Specify if the applicant will be financed by WWTF. Please not that you can only indicate time commitment to the project for one full year (full time equivalents). A mixture of WWTF and in-kind financing is permitted.
Enter the annual salary that corresponds to 100% employment. The total funding requested for each person will be automatically calculated. The system automatically calculates the costs per given time duration (in this case: 6 months). 
Please be aware that the system automatically calculates the aliquot sums for your 6 month research stay
Non-personnel costs
Add rows to provide a concise overview of all non-personnel costs directly related to the Fellowship. Please select the institution and cost category from the dropdown menus. 
Costs for basic infrastructure are not permitted. 
WWTF strongly encourages open access publications. Costs for Article Processing Charges (APCs) may be requested.
Costs for data management purposes (e.g., curation, storage) are eligible.
Costs for travel, accommodation, etc.: to be covered by personnel costs or separate under non-personnel costs
Cost overview
This is where you see all budget divided into personnel and non-personnel costs. 
Explanation of cost planning
Please provide an explanation of cost planning principles, also indicating access to resources that are already available. 1000 characters).
Disclosure of other applications for funding
If you have applied for funding for this project (or parts thereof) at other organisations, please indicate this here. This will not impact the evaluation of this proposal.
WWTF allows the simultaneous submission of proposals at other funding organisation. However, WWTF does not permit double funding.

Signatures
Applications require the signatures of the authorized person(s) at the home/host institutions located in Vienna.
Please consult the institutional research services regarding the person mandated to sign the proposals and plan sufficient time to obtain their signatured
Enter the name of the authorized person in the online form. This information will be included in the PDF to be signed.
Download the PDF using the link “You can generate the signature sheet here”.
Signatures may be provided in various formats
Add a scanned or physical signature, and upload the form; or
Insert an electronic signature (e.g., A-Trust, Handysignatur) and upload the form. Please note that electronically signed PDFs cannot be merged into a single document.

Submit the proposal
Once all symbols in all chapters are marked by green checkmarks, the proposal can be submitted. The “Submit” button is at the bottom of the “Signatures” chapter. The PI&C will receive an automatic confirmation email when the Funding Portal receives the completed submission.
No changes are possible after the application has been submitted. After the indicated deadline, submission is no longer possible. Unsubmitted proposals will be excluded from the ensuing evaluation process and deleted shortly after the submission deadline.
You can access your submitted proposal as PDF on the page “My Proposals and Roles”. 

Contact
 
Benjamin Missbach | benjamin.missbach@wwtf.at | Tel.: +43 1 402 31 43 19
Grace Liu | grace.liu@wwtf.at | Tel.: +43 1 402 31 43 12