The Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences are the Confederation’s funding body for improving cooperation in and between all academic disciplines and for rooting science in society.16
They shall use the contributions granted by the Confederation for the following purposes in particular:
conducting and supporting the early recognition of themes relevant to society in education, research and innovation;
striving to ensure that whoever makes or applies scientific discoveries fulfils their ethical responsibilities;
encouraging dialogue between the world of science and society; they shall fund studies on the opportunities and risks of innovations and technologies.17
The individual institutions mentioned in Article 4 letter a number 2 shall coordinate their research funding activities in the context of the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences and in particular ensure collaboration with higher education research centres.18
They encourage collaboration among scientists and experts in specialist bodies, commissions and other suitable organisational forms and use these to perform their tasks.
They support international scientific collaboration by funding or running suitable institutions, in particular national coordination platforms and scientific administrative offices for internationally coordinated programmes in which Switzerland participates.
They may support data collections, documentation systems, scientific journals, publications, or similar institutions, which serve as useful infrastructures for the development of fields of expertise in Switzerland and which do not come under the remit of the SNSF or the higher education research centres or do not receive direct support from the Confederation.
In order to ensure the continuity of its research funding, the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences may use part of the funding provided by the Confederation to build up equity in the form of reserves. The amount of the reserves in any financial year may not exceed 10 per cent of the annual funding provided by the Confederation in that year to the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences.19
Based on the financing decisions of the Federal Assembly, SERI shall periodically enter into a service level agreement with the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences. In this document, SERI may assign them and the individual institutions mentioned in Article 4 letter a number 2, within the scope of their tasks and powers, the task of conducting evaluations under paragraphs 2–6, implementing scientific projects, running institutions under paragraph 6 and other special tasks.20