Academy projects

Aim

Academy Project funding is the Academy’s key funding opportunity, designed to promote the quality and diversity of research and its capacity for renewal. The funding provides researchers with an opportunity to carry out scientifically ambitious research, to achieve new breakthroughs and to engage in high-risk research.

The aim is attain internationally as high a scientific standard of work as possible and to strengthen the creativity, capacity and impact of research. The funding is granted primarily to teams composed of researchers who have completed their doctorate. 

The Academy encourages researchers to engage in international mobility that will support their research, for example, so that a researcher hired to a project works abroad for a fixed period. A project may also hire a foreign researcher who already works in Finland or who will come to work within the Finnish scientific community. We also encourage researchers to draft ambitious research plans that cross discipline boundaries and aim at scientific breakthroughs.

Applicant

The director of an Academy Project (the Principal Investigator) must have the qualifications of a professor or an adjunct professor (docent).

If the PI does not have an employment relationship with, for example, a university or research institute, he or she shall explain in the application how his or her salary will be covered during the project’s funding period. It is the applicant’s responsibility to give an account of these details at the application stage.

Funding

Academy funding can be used to cover both direct and indirect research costs arising from, for example, the research team’s  

• working hours
• research costs
• travel
• national and international collaboration and mobility
• work and researcher training abroad
• costs arising from the preparation of international projects.

Appendix 2 shows the average amount of funding granted in earlier calls.

Funding period 

The funding period starts in September. As a rule, the funding is for four years.

Special conditions and restrictions

Academy Project funding is primarily intended towards the salaries of researchers who work full-time on the project and for other project costs.

In the September call, the Academy will consider only one application for an Academy Project (incl. a consortium subproject) or a research post as Academy Research Fellow or Postdoctoral Researcher from one and the same researcher. If an applicant does submit more than one application for any of these funding opportunities or applies for more than one type of such funding, only the first application received from that applicant will be reviewed. Applications that are not reviewed for this reason will not be eligible for funding.

Applicants who have an ongoing Academy Project (an independent project or a consortium subproject), a project funded through a general research grant or funding allocated to an Academy Research Fellow or an Academy Professor for hiring a research team, will not be eligible to receive funding for a simultaneous Academy Project except for very compelling reasons.

In the September call, a PI who has an ongoing project funded through a general research grant that ends 31 December can, however, be granted Academy Project funding.

The PI of a Centre of Excellence (CoE) – or any other researcher affiliated with a CoE – is eligible to apply for Academy Project funding only during the second three-year term of the CoE funding period.

Appendices

See Appendix 1 A (in the call for applications), Appendices to application.

How to apply

The deadline is in September. The deadline is non-negotiable and also applies to consortium subprojects. Applications are drafted in the Academy’ online services (select Open calls > Academy Project).

Draft the application so as to ensure that the Academy’s contribution to funding comes to no more than 70% of the estimated total project costs. See more details on our website under Full cost model.  

If the applicant is a consortium, see detailed guidelines on our website under Consortium application. The application of the whole consortium will be processed only if the applications of all subprojects have been submitted by the deadline. The composition of the consortium cannot be changed after the deadline.

More information

For more information contact the science advisors mentioned in the previous call for applications. 

updated according to September call for applications 2012