International Relations Unit
The task of the International Relations Unit is for its part to support the Academy’s strategy and, in particular, the implementation of the goals set in the Academy’s international strategy.
The Unit’s activities are related to the Academy’s horizontal international cooperation and focused on initiating new cooperation and new cooperation forms with international research funding organisations. The Academy has collaborative agreements with 42 foreign organisations. The Unit is responsible for renewing the Academy’s bilateral agreements, developing activities related to these agreements and managing the application process of grants and invitation monies promoting contractual researcher mobility. The most common contractual cooperation forms are research programme and research project cooperation, expert evaluation, researcher training courses, researcher mobility and exchange of information.
Within its scope of responsibility, the Unit works actively for the establishment of the European Research Area (ERA) and monitors its development as well as responds to challenges ERA creates.
In cooperation with Finnish experts the Unit acts in the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) that is drafting a long-term infrastructure plan for Europe and updating the previous plan.
The Unit is responsible for the general coordination of EU matters assigned to the Academy. The Unit attends to the following specific programmes within the EU 7th Framework Programme:
- Horizontal (expert)
- People (expert and national contact point)
- Infra (committee member and national contact point)
- International cooperation (committee member and national contact point)
- Research potential (experts)
The Unit is responsible for the translation and language checking of the Academy’s information, publication and other material as well as for the coordination of translations assigned to translation agencies.
Unit staff