The Vienna BioCenter PhD Program is a doctoral school of the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna, run together with the Gregor Mendel Institute (GMI) and the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) and the Max Perutz Labs. Students are recruited through calls, not through individual applications to a professor. The Autumn Call 2026 opened on 1 September 2026 and the deadline for written applications and references is 15 October 2026 at 23:59 CET.
What you get: this is a funded position rather than a stipend. Students receive a full-time employment contract with a salary of €39,000 to €42,900 gross per year (2025 figures, depending on the institute), including health, pension, accident and unemployment insurance. Tuition fees are reimbursed for the duration of the PhD; for EU/EEA citizens they are waived for the standard duration. The programme describes the PhD as a 4-5 year fully funded doctorate.
Who can apply: you need a master’s degree or equivalent in a life-sciences related subject, or you must expect to receive it within 6 months of the application deadline. You also need more than 6 months of full-time research experience in a relevant area and a high level of spoken and written English; no official language certificate is required. There is no nationality restriction on the eligibility page. One rule to note: if you already applied to the Vienna BioCenter PhD Program in the past, you are not eligible to apply again.
References: you must provide full details of two referees with institutional email addresses, and at least one of them must have supervised you in a research project. Both referees have to submit their references before the system allows you to submit your own application, so contact them well before 15 October.
Selection timeline: online panel interviews on 24-25 November 2026; a meeting with principal investigators on 1 December 2026 from 3 to 5 pm CET; research group interviews from 4 to 11 December 2026. The PhD start date is flexible, at the latest 1 June 2027.
For applicants from the GCC and the wider Arab world, the practical points are the employment contract, which comes with Austrian social insurance, and the fact that the programme does not require an IELTS or TOEFL score. Check the participating institutes’ research groups on the VBC site before applying, since you indicate your preferred groups in the form.