Academy of Finland Newsletter, November 2008
The Academy of Finland newsletter will keep you updated on basic 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:
Finnish R&D expenditure increased by nearly €500 million
Finnish Government report on innovation policy
Academy supports biosciences and environmental research with €28 million
Academy funds health research with €22 million
Academy funds natural sciences and engineering research with over €39 million
Academy funds culture and society research with €24 million
Research programme on child welfare and health to focus on supporting childhood development
Tübitak and Academy of Finland signed Letter of Understanding
Brazilian-Finnish joint project to accelerate bioenergy research
Major EU research funding to Academy-funded top scientists
Scroll down for more on these stories
FINNISH R&D EXPENDITURE INCREASED BY NEARLY €500 MILLION
Total expenditure on research and development rose in Finland to good €6.2 billion in 2007. According to the recent statistics of the Statistics Finland, the growth in real terms that exceeded 5 per cent was the fastest since the turn of the millennium. R&D expenditure grew by over €400 million in the business enterprise sector and by almost €90 million even in the higher education sector. By contrast, approximately €10 million less R&D expenditure than in the previous year was recorded in statistics for the public sector, even though some R&D activities of the local government sector were also included this time.
R&D expenditure in the business enterprise sector reached €4.5 billion. More than €2.5 billion of this were spent on electronics and electrical products. The electronics industry increased its R&D spending by €230 million. Good growth figures were also achieved in many other industries. In manufacturing, R&D expenditure went up by over EUR 40 million in both the chemical industry and the metal and engineering industry. Among other industries, R&D expenditure grew by nearly €70 million in computer and related activities. In financial intermediation (banks and insurance companies), now included as a new industry in the statistics, R&D expenditure amounted to €35 million. A subject of special examination was R&D expenditure on biotechnology on which enterprises spent €110 million. In 2003, the respective figure was €85 million.
Expenditure on R&D is estimated to go up by approximately €200 million in 2008. However, its GDP share is expected to contract by one-tenth of a percentage point from the 3.5 per cent level where it has stood for the past few years.
The figure showing the R&D expenditure by sector and GDP share of R&D expenditure in 2001–2007 and estimate for 2008, is available at the Statistics Finland website.
FINNISH GOVERNMENT REPORT ON INNOVATION POLICY
The Finnish Government has approved an innovation policy report that includes key strategy lines for the development and renewal of Finland’s innovation policy. According to the report, the development of Finnish innovation activity requires new, broad-based innovation policy that also in future will be based on solid knowledge base.
A special challenge in the development of innovation activity is to utilise the creativity of individuals and communities. Essential prerequisites for the success of Finnish innovation activity are open internationality, a strong pioneering role in selected subfields and encouragement and spurring of innovative individuals and businesses instead of a system. Internationalisation will be further promoted by, for example, providing innovation producers with more attractive incentives to international networking and risk-taking.
In support of public sector innovation activity, incentives linked to central government performance management and to the system of central government transfers to local government should be created. The scope of the activity should be expanded with new incentives for developing, in particular, business and management innovations, service and social innovations, and innovations of creative fields. In addition, the resources for R&D activities should be increased and the central government corporate steering should be renewed with a view to enhancing broad-based innovation policy.
In order to enhance national innovation activity, strong and internationally networked, strategically managed thematic and regional innovation hubs need to be established. According to Finnish Minister of Economic Affairs Mr Mauri Pekkarinen, a number of separate decisions have been made during the past decade regarding Finnish R&D policy. However, activities based on these have not been compiled and coordinated into a coherent national strategy. The Government report is aimed at helping in this. The strategy identifies four key drivers of change: globalisation; sustainable development and climate change; new technologies; and ageing of population faced by Finland and Europe in particular. The strategy provides four basic choices on the basis of which the innovation system can be developed in future.
ACADEMY SUPPORTS BIOSCIENCES AND ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH WITH €28 MILLION
The Academy of Finland’s Research Council for Biosciences and Environment has allocated general research grants to 61 research projects. The funding decisions made by the Research Council within the Academy’s January 2008 call amount to €28 million.
About 30 per cent of funding went to research in the fields of biochemistry and micro- and molecular biology. A little less than 30 per cent of funding went to research in the field of ecology. In addition, the Council also supported interdisciplinary research focusing on complex problems.
ACADEMY FUNDS HEALTH RESEARCH WITH €22 MILLION
The Academy of Finland’s Research Council for Health has decided on the allocation of general research grants for health research within the Academy’s January 2008 call. The funding decisions made amount to €15.5 million. Among others, funding goes to a research project investigating the impact of preterm birth on adult health, a project on prostate cancer and a project investigating the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease and the role of inflammation in the development of the disease.
By the end of January 2008, the Research Council received 193 general research grant applications worth about €65 million in all. The Council ultimately decided to fund 59 projects. The Council also provides funding to 29 Postdoctoral Researcher’s projects and to eight applications for promoting clinical research careers. The purpose of Postdoctoral Researcher’s project funding is to advance the professional competence and independence of young researchers who have recently earned their doctorate. Promotion of clinical research careers is aimed at supporting, among others, researchers engaged in clinical practice by funding their part-time research.
ACADEMY FUNDS NATURAL SCIENCES AND ENGINEERING RESEARCH WITH OVER €39 MILLION
The Academy of Finland’s Research Council for Natural Sciences and Engineering has decided on the allocation of more than €39 million in research funding within the Academy’s January 2008 call. Research projects receive a total of €28.8 million, and a large part of this sum – more than €8.6 million – goes to basic research that supports the thematic areas of Strategic Centres for Science, Technology and Innovation.
The decision-in-principle to establish these strategic centres was made in June 2006 by the Science and Technology Policy Council of Finland. The centres to be launched in the first phase represent the following fields: energy and the environment; metal products and mechanical engineering; the forest cluster; health and well-being; information and communication industry and services. So far, four centres have been launched. The objective is to promote dynamic and interactive research and thereby support future key thematic areas for business and industry as well as society.
The single largest funding (€1.08m) for research projects supporting the strategic centre in the forest sector goes to a University of Oulu consortium that conducts research into new ways of controlling the combustion of various biomasses. Other forest sector projects that receive funding deal with themes, such as the development of analysis methods for wood-based materials in nanoscale, and the generation of new basic knowledge on the biological decomposition process of lignin.
In the field of metal products and mechanical engineering, funding goes to projects researching the stress concentrations of steel, the corrosion resistance of cold-sprayed metallic coatings as well as magnetic shape memory alloys.
The largest funding within the thematic area of energy and the environment, a total of 800,000 euros, goes to a consortium investigating vibration control of electrical machines. The consortium partners are from Helsinki University of Technology (TKK), Åbo Akademi University and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.
Research supporting the strategic centre in the area of information and communication industry and services receives two million euros through a separate, targeted call in the field of embedded systems.
The Council also grants project funding to research into signal processing and information networks, for instance.
In addition, the Council supports the research career with a total of €10.46 million.
ACADEMY FUNDS CULTURE AND SOCIETY RESEARCH WITH €24 MILLION
The Academy of Finland’s Research Council for Culture and Society has decided to fund 68 projects with a total of €24 million. The bulk of the projects receive funding for four years, which corresponds to about 400,000 euros per project. In addition, the Council also provides three-year funding to 52 Postdoctoral Researchers.
Themes emphasised by the Council cover depression, the media, young men and immigrants. In addition to projects of current significance, the projects receiving funding also include themes of long-term significance in terms of human understanding and culture, such as human rights and ethics. “Research into the humanities and social sciences offers an opportunity to tackle topical questions that society today faces while at the same time shedding light on basic human questions about identities and communities,” said Professor Eila Helander, Chair of the Research Council for Culture and Society.
This year, the Research Council had formulated a special theme to which it would target funding, namely, research on basic security. Of the applications submitted, the Council decided to grant funding worth a total of €1.5 million to five projects. Key thematic areas related to basic security include, on the one hand, working social security systems, changes to and future challenges of basic security, and the level, scope and fairness of basic security and, on the one hand, the quality and future development needs of services such as eldercare.
RESEARCH PROGRAMME ON CHILD WELFARE AND HEALTH TO FOCUS ON SUPPORTING CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT
The Academy of Finland is preparing a research programme on children’s welfare and health. Its focus is on ways of promoting and protecting children’s health and well-being as well as on health and welfare risks, risk management, and environments of childhood growth. In the research community, too, questions of children’s well-being have attracted increasing attention both nationally and internationally.
The programme provides an opportunity to build up critical mass for an in-depth study and analysis of existing research challenges within the programme’s thematic areas. The programme’s cross-cutting theme is to investigate and analyse the causes of inequality and marginalisation. The research knowledge to be generated by the programme should help understand and support the well-being of children and families on several levels as well as create simple and functional indicators for the measurement of well-being.
The programme is scheduled to run for four years and it will receive eight million euros in funding.
TÜBITAK AND ACADEMY OF FINLAND SIGNED LETTER OF UNDERSTANDING
The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (Tübitak) and the Academy of Finland signed a Letter of Understanding in Helsinki in October. For Tübitak, the LoU was signed by Tübitak’s President, Professor Nüket Yetis and for the Academy, by the Academy’s Vice President (Administration) Ossi Malmberg. Negotiations on possible cooperation forms between Tübitak and the Academy were initially launched in 2005. The forms of cooperation will be further specified in late 2008.
BRAZILIAN-FINNISH JOINT PROJECT TO ACCELERATE BIOENERGY RESEARCH
The Academy of Finland had opened a call for Finnish-Brazilian research projects in the field of energy. The themes of the call are: sustainable terrestrial biomass systems for energy; energy efficiency in pulp and paper production; and biomass-based production in biorefineries. Finnish-Brazilian joint projects will be part of the Academy’s Sustainable Energy research programme. The call is implemented both in Finland and Brazil.
The joint call in the field of energy research is based on the agreement signed in May 2008 between the Academy of Finland and the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development CNPq. The forms of cooperation specified in this agreement include research project cooperation. “Brazil is one of the leading countries in bioenergy research, which provides a firm starting point for further cooperation. In addition, both countries considered also important to carry out research on the use of bioenergy in forest industry,” said Professor Paavo Pelkonen, member of the Academy of Finland Board.
According to Pelkonen, the key task of the funding agencies is to establish common rules and ways of action for carrying out the scientific evaluation of Finnish-Brazilian applications. “This provides a good basis to build up a wide range of cooperation,” Pelkonen said. In future, the Academy works to launch Finnish-Brazilian joint calls in fields where the Academy has an ongoing research programme. The Academy and CNPq will annually agree on research projects to be jointly funded. Through cooperation and joint calls, Finnish researchers will have an opportunity to establish new contacts with the Brazilian scientific community.
MAJOR EU RESEARCH FUNDING TO ACADEMY-FUNDED TOP SCIENTISTS
The European Research Council (ERC) has granted its Advanced Grants in the domain of life sciences to five research teams headed by Finnish scientists. ERC funding to individual research projects amounts to a maximum of €3.5 million for five years.
The Finnish ERC Advanced Grant winners are Academy Professors Howard Jacobs from the University of Tampere, Ilkka Hanski from the University of Helsinki and Jussi Taipale from the National Public Health Institute, and Professors Päivi Peltomäki from the University of Helsinki and Ari Helenius from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich (ETH).
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Academy of Finland in brief: The Academy’s objective is to promote high-level scientific research 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 276 million euros. Each year about 5,000 people benefit from Academy research funding. For more information, go to www.aka.fi or send a message to maj-lis.tanner@aka.fi.