Swiss National Science Foundation

NHMRC is providing up to $5 million to support Australia-based researchers who are participating as partners in the Australian-Swiss JRP Call for Proposals 2026.

This joint NHMRC–SNSF call invites research proposals addressing key challenges related to the use of AI in healthcare for populations of diverse sex, gender, sexual orientations or other underrepresented population groups of relevance to both countries. Proposals must develop effective and innovative solutions and approaches to mitigate biases in the use of AI in healthcare for underrepresented population groups by enhancing the diversity of training datasets, establishing comprehensive evaluation mechanisms, developing inclusive data governance structures and policies, and creating protocols that help clinicians and patients to understand AI decisions for healthcare in a culturally informed way.

For the purposes of this funding opportunity, ‘underrepresented populations’ refers to populations in model datasets that inadequately reflect the diversity of the individuals or groups contained in the population they are intended to represent.

NHMRC aims to fund the Australia-based components of research, where the transnational consortium has been recommended for funding by SNSF.

Application process

• Applications are to be jointly prepared by Swiss and Australia-based applicants. Applications must be submitted via Sapphire by 17:00 AEST 18 June 2026 and via the SNSF Portal by 17:00 CET 17 June 2026.
• NHMRC conducts eligibility checks for Australia-based collaborators.
• Peer review will be conducted by an international panel of experts selected by NHMRC and SNSF.
• Overall assessment scores are used to produce a rank ordered list of applications, on which funding recommendations will be based.
• NHMRC funding recommendations approval process.

Further details for the call and guidance documents can be found on the SNSF website.