Academy of Finland Newsletter, June 2010
The Academy of Finland newsletter will keep you updated on high-quality scientific research funded in Finland and on other news from the Finnish world of science and research. In case you wish us to send this to someone else in your organisation or if you do not want to receive these newsletters in the future, please let us know at viestinta@aka.fi.
Features:
EUR 100 million to Baltic Sea research from the EU
Finns active in EU calls
Academy of Finland appointed nine new Academy Professors
Academy funding to nine new FiDiPro Professors
Academy research programme: Science perspective must be more firmly embedded in energy policy decisions
Four Finnish-Chilean projects receive funding for education research
Four Finnish-Brazilian research projects receive funding for optoelectronics research
Finland and the USA to cooperate in agricultural research
Ministry to investigate impacts of the structural development of universities
Academy of Finland at a glance
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EUR 100 million to Baltic Sea research from the EU
The European Parliament and the Council have decided to fund a joint Baltic Sea research programme with a total of 100 million euros in 2010–2016. The new research programme, BONUS BALTIC (previously referred to as BONUS-169), will provide a solid foundation for the development of operational principles, management and provisions to support the sustainable use of the Baltic Sea region. The research programme will take into account both the special environmental characteristics of the Baltic Sea and the economic and social factors of the societies in the region. Half of the funding will come from the European Commission’s 7th Framework Programme and half from national funding agencies of the Baltic Sea region countries.
The BONUS BALTIC programme will build on the existing BONUS Plus programme. So far, more than 100 research institutes and universities from the nine Baltic Sea countries have participated in the BONUS Plus programme. The initiators of BONUS BALTIC are Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Norway and Russia may also join the programme.
“This is very encouraging news for the sustainable development and support of the Baltic Sea. The Parliament’s decision makes it possible to carry out scientifically high-quality projects that support preservation work and bring together researchers from several countries,” says Dr Kaisa Kononen, Executive Director of the BONUS Baltic Organisations Network for Funding Science EEIG, who heads the programme in Helsinki. “The ongoing 16 BONUS Plus projects have already submitted dozens of improvement proposals for protection measures and decision-making in different countries around the Baltic Sea.”
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Finns active in EU calls
Finns have actively participated and been successful in the calls for proposals within the European Commission’s 7th Framework Programme (FP7). By 25 March 2010, in all 879 Finnish participations (586 projects) have been funded with close to 302.6 million euros from the FP7. The volume of these projects is 5.7 billion euros. The contracts that have already been signed involve 133 Finnish coordinators. The funding from the FP7 to Finland accounts for 2.37 per cent of the funding granted. The most popular themes among the Finnish participants have been ICT, health research, and nanosciences and -technologies, materials and processes.
Finns are also involved in contract negotiations. The total number of Finnish participations in proposals that have been submitted and that have met the call requirements is 4,774. The number of participations on the list of Finnish participations funded tentatively is 1,135 (848 projects), 160 of which are coordinators. The success rate of Finnish participants is 23.77 per cent, while the success rate of all EU Member States is 22.28 per cent. On the basis of the list of projects funded, the funding expected to come to Finland is 409 million euros. The tentative volume of projects in which Finns are participating is about 7.8 billion euros. EU funding applied for by Finns per participant comes to about 354,000 euros.
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Academy of Finland appointed nine new Academy Professors
The Board of the Academy of Finland has appointed nine new Academy Professors. They are Professors Moncef Gabbouj (Tampere University of Technology), Markku Kulmala (University of Helsinki), Markku Laakso (University of Eastern Finland), Craig Primmer (University of Turku), Tuija Pulkkinen (University of Helsinki), Jukka Seppälä (Aalto University), Kaarlo Tuori (University of Helsinki), Willem de Vos (University of Helsinki) and Seppo Ylä-Herttuala (University of Eastern Finland). A more detailed presentation of each new Academy Professor is available on the Academy website at www.aka.fi/academy-professors.
Appointees shall have demonstrated excellence in research and contributed to the development of their field as a whole. The new Academy Professors’ term of office runs from 1 January 2011 to 31 December 2015. At the start of June 2010 there were altogether 41 Academy Professors. Academy Professors are in the employ of their respective university.
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Academy funding to nine new FiDiPro Professors
The Board of the Academy of Finland has decided to fund nine new Finland Distinguished Professors (FiDiPro Professors) to be recruited by Finnish universities. Within the Academy’s FiDiPro call, now arranged for the third time, funding worth 10.5 million euros was granted for the work of foreign top-tier researchers in Finland for five years on average. The professors selected within this round of the programme will be based at the University of Helsinki, University of Jyväskylä, University of Tampere, Tampere University of Technology, and University of Turku. A total of 45 letters of interest for the FiDiPro programme were submitted to the Academy.
The professorships to be funded cover a wide range of scientific disciplines, with research topics such as the effects of fungi on crop plants and forest trees, the relations between the Ancient Near East and the West, the mechanisms underlying complex diseases, and the importance of aerosol particles on climate change.
The Finland Distinguished Professor Programme is a joint funding programme of the Academy of Finland and Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation. With funding from the programme, Finnish universities and research institutes can hire foreign or expatriate Finnish top researchers to work in Finland for a fixed period. So far, the FiDiPro programme has brought 53 FiDiPro Professors to Finland.
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Academy research programme: Science perspective must be more firmly embedded in energy policy decisions
A research point of view should be integrated more firmly into energy policy decision-making. At present, Finland is about to make major decisions on energy policy, but without an overall picture of the future effects of these decisions, say researchers involved in the Academy of Finland research programme Sustainable Energy. For instance, the effects of the Finnish Government’s recent bioenergy decision on the soil and the forest ecosystem have not been assessed sufficiently. There is not enough research on the effects of the highly increased use of forest woodchips and forest fertilisation on forest ecosystems and forest soil processes and runoff.
Researchers participating in the Sustainable Energy research programme convened in June to discuss energy policy and future challenges facing energy research. The aim was to survey, for instance, what kind of research is needed in the energy field, how different forms of renewable energy should be developed, what kind of a role Finland should adopt in the implementation of EU energy policy and how we could contribute to solving global energy problems by saving energy and affecting consumer behaviour.
The researchers emphasised that climate change calls for radical energy policy solutions. All solutions must take account of energy and carbon efficiency. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is one of the new research fields that is increasingly gaining ground in Finland as well. Mineralisation, for instance, is a new method where carbon dioxide is processed into minerals that can be further processed in industry or stored.
The researchers pointed out that future biofuels can be processed from raw materials that do not compete with food production. We must be able to utilise materials suitable as fuel sources as efficiently as possible. In researching and developing biofuel materials, we must focus particularly on process development.
So far, very few studies have tackled the sociological, psychological and economic aspects of energy consumption. In terms of energy efficiency and energy conservation it is, however, important to study how people behave and how to steer consumer behaviour.
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Four Finnish-Chilean projects receive funding for education research
Four three-year Finnish-Chilean joint research projects have been granted funding for education research. The Academy of Finland has decided to fund Finnish research teams within the projects with a total of 1.8 million euros and the Chilean National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICYT) will fund Chilean research teams with 400,000 euros.
Funding is granted to the following projects: Development of teacher students’ skills and its relation to acquiring pedagogical knowledge; Predicting and supporting reading acquisition via computer games for children at risk for dyslexia; The development of pupils’ and teachers’ mathematical understanding and performance when dealing with open-ended problems; Parents and school choice: Family strategies, segregation and school policies in Chilean and Finnish comprehensive schools.
The Academy and CONICYT agreed on cooperation in 2007. The first joint call, launched in autumn 2007, was implemented in the field of sustainable energy research. The agreement on a joint call in the field of education research was signed in 2009.
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Four Finnish-Brazilian research projects receive funding for optoelectronics research
Four three-year Finnish-Brazilian joint research projects have been granted funding for optoelectronics research. The Academy of Finland has decided to fund Finnish research teams within the projects with a total of 1.7 million euros and Brazilian CNPq (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico) will fund Brazilian researchers with 550,000 euros.
The Academy of Finland and the CNPq agreed on cooperation in 2008. The first joint call, launched in autumn 2008, was implemented in the field of sustainable energy research. The projects of the present call are related to the Academy of Finland research programme Photonics and Modern Imaging Techniques. The research programme has previously launched joint calls with the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR).
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Finland and the USA to cooperate in agricultural research
The Academy of Finland and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and its Agricultural Research Service have declared their interest to explore and coordinate research activities of mutual interest, and to broaden collaborative research programmes and exchange. According to a Memorandum of Agreement, both parties will strengthen cooperation in the fields of food, public health and agriculture.
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Ministry to investigate impacts of the structural development of universities
The Finnish Ministry of Education, Science and Culture has investigated the effects of the ongoing structural development of universities on university research and education and on steering and management in academia, such as the role of universities in the innovation system, the funding, nature and results of research, the organisation of research and teaching, and the international engagement of universities and their contacts with society. Besides the administrative-organisational structural development, the project also focused on two other, closely related university policy trends: strengthening the economic autonomy and authority of universities, and increasing the societal impact of university operations.
The study identified seven topical themes that are closely related with the structural development of universities. The first theme is linked to the universities’ efforts to anticipate future trends by increasing unit sizes and merging with other universities. Merging is a way to achieve better quality, improved visibility and a more efficient use of resources for research and education. It can also be a survival strategy in today’s increasingly fierce national and international competition.
The second theme involves different problems that hamper the merging process, such as problems in merging different organisational, administrative, operational, management, teaching and learning cultures, and the uneven distribution of resources allocated for development. Mergers and the fact that external funding is becoming more and more competitive increasingly lead universities to intensify their strategic planning and profile their research and teaching activities.
The fourth and fifth themes examine the internationality, multidisciplinarity and increasingly closer cooperation of universities with other actors in society. These are the accelerating trends in research and education. Research and teaching at universities must also be integrated more closely with each other.
The relative proportion of external funding in research funding has continued to increase, and its significance will also grow in teaching and in maintaining basic infrastructures in academia. In addition, different planning, quality, assessment and monitoring systems will take more and more time away from research and teaching. The underlying threat is that the university’s core functions will be superseded by administratively focused organisational reforms and intensifying actions.
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Academy of Finland at a glance
The Academy’s objective is to promote scientific research of a high standard through long-term quality-based research funding, research and science policy expertise, and efforts to strengthen the position of science and scientific research. The Academy makes decisions on research funding worth 314 million euros. Each year about 5,000 people benefit from Academy research funding. For more information, go to www.aka.fi/eng or send a message to maj-lis.tanner@aka.fi.