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.
