IAVS Early Career Supporting Grant

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This is the International Association for Vegetation Science’s special grant program to assist its members in their career development.

The main aim of the ECS Grant is to stimulate and support the development of early-career researchers in vegetation science. The awarded grants should help MSc and PhD students, as well as Postdocs with up to 2 years of working experience after PhD defence, to advance their personal and professional development. In particular, the ECS Grant will be dedicated to early-career individuals who want:

• to attend training courses,
• to attend workshops, to participate/ do field excursions
• to do a short-term research stay in other institutions,  to buy licenses for software to purchase material (reagents, laboratory equipment) that will directly help them and their career development.

 

The ECS Grant , however, is not to be used for participation in IAVS symposia or meetings of working groups or regional sections, as there are already IAVS Travel Grants to support this. The grant also cannot be used for paying APCs for scientific publications.

We explicitly support proposals that clearly focus on developing individual skills and competencies.

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Timetable

• Application deadline: 30.03.2026
• Announcement of awardees: 30.04.2026

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Funding

The ECS Grant value will depend on the applicant’s needs (details should be clearly disclosed in the application) and should not exceed € 1000. Payments are made for costs that the awardee would have to incur, i.e. flight tickets and accommodation. In all cases of fund allocation preceding the expense, the awardee must send relevant payment invoices to the committee reporting the same amount previously indicated in the budget plan attached to the ECS Grant proposal.

The budget for this call is € 4,000. The committee retains the right not to allocate the whole sum. The funding must be used within the year (2026) of the ECS Grant being awarded.

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Eligibility

• Clear study and research focus on vegetation science.
• Only current IAVS members can apply; the member should also be registered under Working Groups & Regional Sections: Young Scientists in the IAVS platform (https://www.iavs.org/members/member_engagement/groups.aspx?id=232260). If you are a young vegetation scientist from a country where limited funding precludes membership in IAVS, you can apply for a waiver of membership fees (https://www.iavs.org/page/membership_financial-support). 
• ‘Early career’ is not connected to biological age and is defined as less than two years after obtaining a PhD degree (excluding parental leave, or sick leave, which must be acknowledged clearly on the CV), including BSc, MSc, and PhD students.
• Independent or being enrolled with an institution or not (unemployed are also eligible). 
• There are no geographic or national restrictions.
• Previous grantees can apply once they have accomplished the required obligations of the earlier grant. Previous grantees who succeed will be awarded no more than 70% of the grant.

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Application

Please submit your application, including all required documents, using the form at the bottom of this page. Keep in mind that you must complete the submission in one session, as your information will not be saved.

Applications must contain the following documents:

1. A short academic CV (1 page), including a list of all publications,

2. Motivation letter with a clear statement on:

• how the grant will advance the applicant’s career;
• why other sources of funding are not available;
• how the financial aid will be used (budget plan).

3. A recommendation letter or an invitation from the host organisation in the case of a short-term research stay or internship. In the case of a course, the applicant should append the syllabus/plan of the course.

 

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Evaluation

The proposals will be evaluated by three independent reviewers, two members of the YS steering committee, and one member of the IAVS as an External Evaluator. The external evaluator for the 2026 call will be Prof. Martin Diekmann. In case there is a conflict of interest or no available evaluators, external evaluators should be invited.

The evaluation will follow a system of points and will consider:

1. Proposal appropriateness: a scientific evaluation where reviewers will evaluate the relevance of the proposed activity for the development of the applicant's career (from 0 to 5 points) 

2. CV appropriateness: the CVs and the list of publications will be judged according to the career level (from 0 to 5 points).

3. Budget appropriateness, and that it doesn’t exceed €1000 (from 0 to 5 points).

4. Extra points will be assigned to people working in low- and middle-income countries and in countries with humanitarian problems, based on the lists available at these links (on lists of countries into low-, middle- and high-income (https://www.iavs.org/page/membership_gdp-ranking  and https://humanitarianaction.info/document/global-humanitarian-overview-2025/article/trends-crises-world-fire#page-title).

In particular, we assign:

+0.5 points to people from Middle-income countries: GDP $10,000-24,999;

+1 points to people from Low-income countries: GDP <$10,000;

+1.5 points to people from countries with humanitarian problems

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Obligations/feedback

• Every grantee will provide a written report (max. 1000 words) by the 31st December of the year the grant was received. The report focuses on the activities realised with the grant support, scientific output, benefits for career development, and receipts of the expenses (financial report). Additionally, the grantee will provide the invoices and paid bills related to the grant, certificates for courses, etc.
• The grantees are required to write a short text to be published in the IAVS Bulletin within 3 months of completion of the grant.
• If the activities performed with the grant result in a publication, the grantee is required to acknowledge this support.