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About us
Helvetia Institute for Science and Innovation is a non-profit association under Swiss law, seated in Marly, Canton of Fribourg, and founded in 2024 to host investigator-led research groups with genuine scientific autonomy.
Mission
To create the conditions in which excellent researchers can work on fundamental questions with real-world consequence — for as long as those questions take.
Much of the science that matters most sits awkwardly in existing structures. It is too fundamental for industry, too applied for some funding lines, too interdisciplinary for a single department, and too slow for the grant cycle that nominally supports it. Promising programmes end not because they failed but because the vehicle carrying them expired.
Switzerland has an unusual advantage here: a strong tradition of independent, privately and publicly co-funded research organisations operating alongside its universities. Helvetia is built in that tradition — small, focused, scientist-governed, and designed to outlast any individual project.
How it works
Helvetia is not a department and not an umbrella brand. It is a functioning employer, grant holder and operator — the institutional counterparty that a research group needs in order to exist.
Hosted groups contribute 20 % of their grant income to the institute. That contribution funds the shared services listed above — nothing else. We publish how it is spent to our members and funders, and we do not levy additional charges on top of it.
To be clear about what the overhead is not: it buys administration, not salaries. Every salary in a hosted group — the principal investigator’s included — is paid from that group’s own grant funds, as it would be at any host institution. The institute does not currently fund investigator positions from its own resources.
Governance
Helvetia is an association under Articles 60 ff. of the Swiss Civil Code. The general meeting of members is its supreme governing body: it adopts and amends the articles of association, elects the committee, appoints the auditors, and approves the annual report and accounts. Between general meetings the institute is administered by a volunteer Executive Committee — President, Treasurer and Secretary — accountable for the association’s finances and legal obligations.
Day-to-day direction is split deliberately. The Scientific Director is responsible for the research programme, scientific standards and the selection of hosted groups. The Executive Director is responsible for funding, operations, finance and partnerships. Neither post reports to the other; both report to the Executive Committee.
The Executive Director post is currently vacant and carried ad interim by the Scientific Director. Recruiting to it is a priority of the founding phase, as is filling the volunteer functions listed openly on our people page.
Milestones
Helvetia Institute for Science and Innovation is constituted as a Swiss non-profit association, seated in Marly, Canton of Fribourg, under CHE-207.046.582.
The Lingenfelder Lab joins as the founding group, with Dr. Magalí Lingenfelder appointed Scientific Director of the institute.
An application for recognition as a tax-exempt public-benefit organisation is filed with the tax administration of the Canton of Fribourg.
The institute is raising founding support to underwrite its core team and operations through the establishment phase, while hosted groups bring their own competitive research funding.
Recruitment is open for a second principal investigator, bringing independent funding of CHF 1M or more. See the hosting criteria.
Next
A small founding team, an open governance structure, and a number of positions we are actively looking to fill.
