CYD Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowships – Call for Applications (13th Cycle)

The Cyber-Defence (CYD) Campus is now accepting applications for the CYD Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowships, a prestigious funding program supporting outstanding early-career researchers working at the intersection of cybersecurity, data science, and digital trust. This highly competitive fellowship provides up to two years of salary support, as well as research and conference funding, enabling fellows to conduct an innovative research project at the CYD Campus under the supervision of a professor from a Swiss higher education institution.

Program Mission

The CYD Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowships aim to cultivate leading researchers prepared to address critical, cross-cutting challenges in cyber defence. Priority areas include:

• Protection of confidentiality, integrity, and availability of cyber and cyber-physical systems
• Information sharing, data fusion, and crowdsourcing
• Data science and AI methods for analysing cyber- and technology-relevant data
• Security, privacy, and digital trust technologies

Proposed projects must demonstrate:

• Significant potential to advance the fields of security and data science and strengthen Switzerland’s cyber-defence capabilities
• Strong collaboration between researchers at the CYD Campus and at least one Swiss higher education institution

A list of prioritized research topics is available in the call guidelines.

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Eligibility Requirements

• Open to researchers of any nationality
• No age restrictions
• Applicants must secure endorsement from a professor at a Swiss higher education institution for Stage 2
• The fellowship research must be conducted in a different laboratory from the applicant’s PhD and any current postdoctoral host lab

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Funding Support

Fellows will receive funding for:

• Salary contribution, including social security benefits, aligned with the host institution salary scale
• Research costs: up to CHF 3,000/year (for project-specific equipment)
• Conference costs: up to CHF 5,000/year

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Application Process

Applicants must carefully review the application guidelines and explore the Application Toolkit before preparing their materials.
All documents must be submitted in English via the online submission platform.

Selection Process

The evaluation includes two stages:

Stage 1

• Internal CYD Campus committee review based on:
  • Fit of the applicant with CYD Campus
  • Alignment of the pre-proposal with program aims
• Shortlisted applicants are paired with a prospective CYD Campus mentor
• Only applicants endorsed by this mentor advance to Stage 2

Stage 2

• Submission of a full research proposal
• Final decisions made by a committee representing CYD Campus and Swiss higher education institutions
• Results announced by end of May 2026

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Key Deadlines (13th Call)

• Stage 1 Submission Deadline:
  25 February 2026, 17:00 CET
• Stage 2 Full Proposal Deadline:
  8 April 2026, 17:00 CEST

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For full details, applicants are encouraged to consult the official guidelines and submission portal.