Seed Funding Programme "University of Vienna Rainforest La Gamba"

Purpose and objectives

The University of Vienna’s new compensation and climate strategy prioritizes university-owned, science-related projects closely tied to research and teaching. A flagship is the “University of Vienna Rainforest” at the Tropical Field Station La Gamba in Costa Rica, which acquires, restores, and protects rainforest to strengthen research and contribute to the university’s CO₂ compensation.

The Seed Funding Programme aims to expand and diversify La Gamba–based research by financing short, early-stage pilot and feasibility studies, with special emphasis on interdisciplinarity. As true seed funding, it is intended to launch new lines of inquiry and collaborations, not full-scale or long-term projects. Funding supports scoping, method development, baseline data collection, and initial infrastructure to enable competitive applications, with successful seeds expected to deliver clear outputs and lead to proposals to major funders within 6–12 months.

Funding details

The programme is open to funding applications from all scientific disciplines and topics, provided they are related to research at the Tropical Field Station La Gamba. Desk‑based research and other preparatory work are permitted. There is no obligation to conduct on‑site work in La Gamba, but the funding is tied to the expectation of submitting a competitive external grant application.