Funding for 2016 threatened with additional cuts
The ETH Board has decided upon the allocation of funding to the institutions for 2016. The Board is concerned that further cutbacks for the ETH Domain are under consideration.
Due to the impending additional expenditure cuts in the 2016 Federal budget, it is still not clear what funding will definitely be available for the ETH Domain in 2016, as announced by the ETH Board today. After the 2015 budget of the ETH Domain was retrospectively reduced and savings were agreed for 2016, further cuts are now under discussion.
At its meeting of 4/5 March 2015, the ETH Board has noted this development with concern. The cuts already agreed to the original 2016 budget amount to 105.8 million CHF, which would leave the ETH Domain with 2445.9 million CHF in federal funding. If there were further cuts for the ETH-Domain amounting to 50.0 million CHF, as is currently being discussed, the budget would be reduced to 2395.9 million CHF.
The majority of this funding is needed to operate and develop further the two Federal Institutes of Technology (ETH Zurich and EPFL) plus the four research institutes PSI, WSL, Empa and Eawag, and is allocated by the ETH Board on a performance-related basis. The Board reserves 141.0 million CHF for Domain-wide activities including the participation in research programmes or the «Coordinated Energy Research in Switzerland» action plan.
At ETH Zurich's Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) in Ticino, the new supercomputing infrastructure is being operated as a long-term scientific user laboratory. The computer centre is also being used by the EPFL's Blue Brain neuroinformatics project, which aims to reconstruct the human brain using supercomputers. 20.0 million CHF has been earmarked for each of these two projects in 2016.
The third major project, SwissFEL at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), becomes operational in 2016 and will be supported to the tune of 25.0 million CHF. With this X-ray laser, researchers will be able to visually track extremely rapid processes in chemical reactions and therefore understand them better.
Lino Guzzella attended the meeting of the ETH Board in his new role as ETH President for the first time. The presidents of ETH Zurich and EPFL are ex officio members of the Management and Supervisory Board of the ETH Domain.