To achieve our mission, we rely on funding from the Swiss Confederation, who has continuously been our largest funder for over 25 years (see this evolution). Building on this stable foundation, our independent status, and the excellence of our workforce and network, we have established the institute as a reference for life science data. This has made us a trusted partner and leader in a range of competitive grants, collaborations and services. In our work on and for cutting-edge technologies, our principal investment is in people. Explore the Sankey chart below for detailed insights into how our financial resources are distributed and allocated.
Supported by competitive and governmental funding, investing in human expertise
Powered by the Swiss Confederation
Our largest and most stable funder is the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI), whose base contribution accounts for 42% of SIB’s income. The 2025-2028 subsidy ceiling is unchanged from the two previous funding periods.
A unique funding model to sustain open resources
The largest part of SERI’s base contribution is devoted to our open resources (CHF 6.9 million, 60%). This subsidy is complemented by many additional funding sources, including competitive grants and contributions from industry. Most resources are additionally supported by short-term research funds held at partner institutions.
Nearly half of SIB’s income comes from competitive funds
In 2025, CHF 11.5 million (41%) of SIB’s income originated from competitive funds, such as European public-private projects and collaborations with industry. This represents an increase of CHF 1.4 million year-on-year. SIB’s independent status, the diversity of our employees’ skills, and the full professional support we offer make us an attractive partner.
Keeping up with increasing demands
The shortfall reflects a deliberate use of reserves to absorb rising compliance and cyber-security costs, and strengthen key support functions needed to sustain service quality.
A centre of excellence that delivers
Our centre of excellence provides training and bioinformatics services to universities, private companies and hospitals. It is mostly funded through collaboration and competitive grants – many international.
Lean and effective management & support
Management and support function expenses (CHF 4.4 million, 15%) cover day-to-day administration, people and culture, finance, communication, legal and IT support. These support teams also contribute to projects in our activity pillars.
Investing in people at the heart of research
CHF 25 million (88%) of SIB’s expenses are devoted to our people, with 24% for employees embedded in partner institutions – reflecting our unique and efficient model that anchors open science infrastructure in research.
Bioinformatics: a multidisciplinary field encompassing a wide variety of life-science data expertise.