Christian Doppler Laboratories

CDG Christian Doppler Laboratories

Funds Austrian industry-academia labs for translational collaboration and practical deployment outcomes.

⚠ This may reflect a past cycle — verify the current call on the funder's site.

Christian Doppler Laboratories are 7-year applied-research units embedded in Austrian universities or non-university research institutions, organized under the Christian Doppler Research Association (CDG), a federally chartered intermediary funded jointly by the Federal Ministry of Labour and Economy and the National Foundation for Research, Technology and Development. Each lab is led by a highly qualified scientist—the Laboratory Head—and must include at least one committed industry partner. Public funding covers 50% of eligible costs (60% for SME partners), and the industry partner contributes 50% in cash (40% for SMEs). Annual budgets range from EUR 140,000 to EUR 800,000 per lab. CDG runs 116 active research units as of 2025 and has supported more than 335 labs since 1988. The program is strictly bottom-up: no thematic restrictions apply.

Labs operate on a 2+3+2 phase structure, with formal interim evaluations before the end of years 2 and 5; failure at either evaluation can terminate a lab early. The minimum annual company membership fee is EUR 22,000 (EUR 10,000 for SMEs), collected at the start of each year on top of the lab budget share. At least one partner—scientific or commercial—must be based in Austria. Applications are submitted in English via the CDG ePortal; the Scientific Board meets four times per year with submission deadlines approximately five weeks before each meeting, and the typical time from application to approval is approximately six months. The next published deadline was 13 May 2026.

Lab applications must include a detailed 5-year research plan (with years 1 and 2 fully specified), a 7-year cost plan, CVs, and full descriptions of commercial partners. A mandatory 30% ring-fence of lab resources must be designated for scientific freedom—proposals allocating 100% to company-directed topics are rejected at the evaluation stage. Companies that are CDG members may treat their contributions as qualifying in-house research expenditure for Austria's Forschungsprämie tax premium. Organizations seeking long-term, structured research collaboration with Austrian academia on technology challenges find this mechanism particularly cost-effective due to the 50% public co-funding and tax deductibility of the industry contribution.