Newsletter GAUSS Career Service

Volkswagen Foundation “Pioneering Research” (apply by 27 Aug 2026) & Online Q&As on 11 June and 16 July 2026

With the program “Pioneering Research – Exploring the Unknown Unknown“, the Volkswagen Foundation supports groundbreaking and risky research ideas with high scientific relevance. They are looking for basic research projects that are not dedicated to the already ‘known unknown’, but that strive to explore the ‘unknown unknown’ thereby holding the potential for major scientific breakthroughs, but also for failure.

Available are up to 1.3 million Euro for max. 3-5 years per project. Eligible to apply are post-doctoral researchers and professors at German universities and research institutes (international collaborations are possible). The next deadline is 27 August 2026.

Join the online Q&A Session on Thursday, 11 June 2026 at 10:00-11:30h to learn more about the scheme. Registration is not required, the access link will be provided via the funding scheme webpage prior to the event. Another Q&A session will take place on 16 July.

Eligibility Criteria

Pioneering projects must fulfill the following criteria:

• radically explorative basic research
• new scientific ground
• research off the beaten track
• high scientific relevance
• high knowledge potential with the expectation of achieving important scientific breakthroughs or even triggering a paradigm shift
• if successful, providing impetus for the specialist community or even beyond
• conceptually or methodologically risky

Projects with the following criteria are not eligible for funding:

• incremental gain in knowledge or little progress in an existing field of research
• primarily application-oriented or aimed at translation (e. g. clinical studies)
• combination of established methods or development of methods without a scientific hypothesis
• continuation of own work or next logical step in own research
• overlap with the Volkswagen Foundation’s thematic funding
• eligibility of support from other funding organizations (e. g. DFG, BMBF)

Further details on the conditions and the application procedure can be found here.