For scientists
Host your group
A Swiss institutional home for your research, with full scientific independence and a transparent 20 % overhead.
How it worksHome/Partner
Ways to engage
Three ways to build this institute with us.
Helvetia is in its founding phase. That makes it an unusually good moment to join — as a principal investigator, as a supporter, or as an industrial partner with a problem that needs atomic-scale answers.
For supporters
Support our work
Founding support underwrites the core team and operations that make independent science possible.
Supporting the instituteFor industry
Partner on a problem
Contract research, joint projects and access to instrumentation and expertise in surface and interface science.
Industry partnershipFor scientists
Host your research group at Helvetia.
If you hold your own competitive funding but need a Swiss institutional home — an employer, a grant holder, a laboratory and an administration — the institute exists to be exactly that.
You remain scientifically sovereign. You set the agenda, recruit your team, publish under your own name and keep your collaborations. The institute takes on the structure around you: employment and payroll administration, financial administration, grant reporting, compliance, safety and shared instrumentation — all funded from your grants, not from ours.
What we ask
- Independent funding of CHF 1 million or more, secured or realistically incoming
- An established track record as a principal investigator
- Scientific overlap with interface, materials, energy or quantum research
- A commitment to the institute’s standards on research integrity, safety and mentoring
- Willingness to contribute to the shared scientific life of the institute
What it costs
Hosted groups contribute 20 % of grant income as overhead. That single figure covers the institute’s services: the legal entity and its capacity to hold grants, payroll and HR administration, finance and grant reporting, compliance, laboratory operations and shared infrastructure.
The overhead buys administration, not salaries. Your group’s salaries — your own included — are paid from your own grant funds, exactly as they would be at any host institution. The institute does not currently fund investigator positions from its own resources, and we would rather say so plainly than have it discovered later.
There are no additional institutional levies on top of the 20 %, and we account for how it is spent. For comparison, overhead rates at most European host institutions sit substantially higher.
How hosting works
An informal conversation
Write to us with a short description of your group, your science and your funding situation. No formal application at this stage.
Scientific review
The Scientific Director assesses fit: scientific quality, complementarity with the existing programme, and the realistic use of shared facilities.
Operational and financial assessment
Together we map your funding, staffing needs, equipment and space requirements against what the institute can provide, and we model the budget openly.
Committee approval and hosting agreement
The Executive Committee approves the arrangement and we sign a hosting agreement setting out responsibilities, overhead, intellectual property and term.
Transfer and set-up
We handle the transfer of grants where permitted, employment of your staff, and laboratory set-up, so your group loses as little continuity as possible.
For supporters
Support the institute.
Research grants pay for research. They do not pay for the institution that makes research possible — and that is precisely where founding support changes what we can do.
Hosted groups bring their own competitive funding. What the institute needs separately is core support: the salaries of its scientific and executive leadership, the shared instrumentation that no single grant can justify, and the finance and administration function that lets scientists spend their time on science. Securing that core is the institute’s central task in its founding phase.
We are speaking with foundations, private donors and public partners about multi-year commitments that underwrite this core through to self-sustaining operation. We would be glad to share our detailed budget, financial plan and funding targets in confidence.
On charitable status. The institute’s application for
recognition as a tax-exempt public-benefit organisation is under review by
the tax administration of the Canton of Fribourg. We will confirm the
position of any prospective donor before a gift is made.
Core support
Multi-year, unrestricted commitments to the institute’s leadership, operations and administration — the funding that is hardest to raise and does the most work.
Instrumentation
Named support for a specific instrument or capability, shared across every group in the institute and available for decades.
People
Support for a named position — a postdoctoral fellowship, a doctoral position, or a technical specialist who serves the whole institute.
For industry
Partner on a problem.
Many industrial failures are interface failures: a catalyst that degrades, a coating that fouls, a surface that corrodes, a device that loses efficiency where two materials meet.
Those problems are often diagnosed by replacing materials until something works. We diagnose them by looking — imaging the interface at atomic resolution and watching the chemistry happen under realistic operating conditions. That usually turns a question of trial and error into a question of mechanism.
- Contract researchDefined, confidential projects on a specific material or interface question, with agreed deliverables.
- Joint research projectsCo-designed programmes, including jointly funded doctoral and postdoctoral positions and Innosuisse-style collaborations.
- Analytical accessAccess to surface characterisation and operando methods, with scientific interpretation rather than raw data alone.
- AdvisoryScientific advice on materials and interface strategy, including technical due diligence.
Get in touch
Every one of these starts with a conversation.
Tell us which of the three you are interested in and we will route you to the right person at the institute.