Academy of Finland Newsletter, April 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:
Nearly one in two doctorate degree holders work in the education sector in Finland
Advisory Board for Sectoral Research investigated the internationalisation of public research institutes
Finnish science gets 26 per cent of lottery funds
New Academy research programme to promote the health and welfare of children and young people
Computational science a pillar of modern science: a new research programme launched
Academy to launch international evaluation of chemistry
2010 Millennium Technology Prize Laureates announced
Academy awarded young students
New brochure on the research career
Scroll down for more on these stories
Nearly one in two doctorate degree holders work in the education sector in Finland
In 2007 in Finland, 44 per cent of those who had completed doctorate-level degrees worked in the education sector; three in four of them were working at universities. Healthcare was the second biggest employer with 16 per cent. According to Statistics Finland, almost one in ten of those with doctorate-level degrees were in employment. Twenty-three per cent earned their living in management tasks and 71 per cent in various specialist tasks. The popularity of management tasks has grown steadily: seven years ago, almost one in five of those with doctorate-level degrees were working in management and three in four in specialist tasks.
In the early 1990s, one third of those with doctorate-level degrees were women, while today more than half are women.
The highly educated find employment clearly better than the rest of the population. In 2007, a total of 39,000 highly educated people were unemployed, which corresponds to an unemployment rate of 4.3 per cent. At the same time, the overall unemployment rate was 6.9 per cent. There were also differences between highly educated groups. The unemployment rate was the lowest among doctors (2.3%) and the highest among those with the lowest level of tertiary qualifications (5.1%). More information is available from tiede.teknologia@stat.fi.
Advisory Board for Sectoral Research investigated the internationalisation of Finnish public research organisations
The Advisory Board for Sectoral Research has investigated the internationalisation of Finnish public research organisations. The Board’s project examined the internationalisation of 19 Finnish public research organisations (PRO), and focused on the following questions: What are the international profiles of Finnish PROs? By what means do Finnish PROs internationalise? What new forms of cooperation have Finnish PROs developed. What are global research needs? What are the main challenges and obstacles relating to the internationalisation of Finnish PROs?
The executive summary focuses on the main conclusions of the study, perceived
development needs related to the internationalisation of PROs, and arising research topics in the field. The executive summary also presents a future vision for Finnish PROs in the European and global research and innovation environment. The report, entitled Internationalisation of Finnish Public Research Organisations – Current State and Future Perspectives, is available on the Ministry of Education website at http://www.minedu.fi/export/sites/default/OPM/Tiede/setu/liitteet/SETU_3-2010.pdf.
Finnish science gets 26 per cent of lottery funds
In 2009, Finns played Veikkaus games (Finnish lottery, betting and pools games company) with a record-high amount of 1,557 million euros. More than half of this was paid as pools wins to players. Veikkaus transfers its proceeds annually to the Ministry of Education, which distributes the funds to Finnish science, arts, sports and youth work. In 2009, the Ministry allocated lottery proceeds of a record-high amount of 461 million euros, that is, on average 9 million euros a week. The good financial result of Veikkaus increased the appropriations allocated to its beneficiaries. In the State Budget, Veikkaus funds account for 26 per cent (87.1 million euros) of all funding to science and for some 42 per cent of the funding allocated to the arts. The major recipient is the Academy of Finland, which annually provides funding to several hundred scientific projects. Other recipients of Veikkaus funds include research institutes and scientific societies and associations.
New Academy research programme to promote the health and welfare of children and young people
The Academy of Finland has launched a new research programme focusing on the health and welfare of children and young people. Known by its epigrammatic name SKIDI-KIDS, the research programme will study factors and operational models promoting the welfare and health of children and young people. Also under study in this context will be problems and risk factors, risk management and growth environments. The research programme further aims to create a knowledge base for informed social discussion, to support policy-making and promote the application of research knowledge.
The programme is built around three research themes: environments of childhood growth, service systems, and challenges for children’s health and health promotion. Another underlying, cross-cutting theme is to study the causes of inequality and social exclusion. The research data produced in the programme should help in the overall understanding and development of the welfare of children and their families on many levels, and in the creation of simple and effective indicators to measure wellbeing. The programme will also help develop new, diversified research methods, by which the individual voices and views of children can be highlighted in research on health and welfare. The programme therefore also includes projects in which children can actively participate.
The SKIDI-KIDS research programme is coordinated by the Academy of Finland and implemented together with the Finnish Ministry of Education and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). Between 2010 and 2013, the programme will provide funding to nine consortia (joint research projects) and eight individual projects. Academy funding for the programme amounts to 8.5 million euros, and funding by the Ministry of Education to 575,000 euros.
Computational science a pillar of modern science: a new research programme launched
The Academy of Finland has launched a research programme on computational science that will support computational studies of increasingly complex phenomena in different scientific fields, improve methodological potential and promote good working practices in the management of used data material and software. The information technology revolution has profoundly changed how science is done. Computation and information management capacities have reached a level where it is possible to describe realistic systems with computational modelling. Computational science has emerged as the third pillar of scientific inquiry to accompany experiment and theory.
The computational approach can yield considerable savings, allowing for the use of computer simulations instead of expensive and time-consuming experiments. It is often impossible to carry out such experiments because of their complexity, but they can be done through computational modelling.
Academy to launch international evaluation of chemistry
The Research Council for Natural Sciences and Engineering of the Academy of Finland has launched a discipline evaluation in the field of chemistry to be carried out this year. The aim of the evaluation is to assess the scientific quality of research and researcher training in the field, its strengths and weaknesses, operating environments and their organisation, the focus of research, and cooperation. The international panel carrying out the evaluation is chaired by Professor Kenneth Ruud from the University of Tromsö, Norway. Other panel members come from Belgium, the UK, Sweden, Germany and Denmark. The evaluation covers the University of Helsinki, the University of Jyväskylä, the University of Eastern Finland, the University of Oulu, Aalto University School of Science and Technology, Tampere University of Technology, the University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University and the Technical Research Centre of Finland VTT.
2010 Millennium Technology Prize Laureates announced
Three European scientists were announced as the 2010 Millennium Technology Prize Laureates. The winner of the world’s biggest technology prize will be announced in Helsinki on 9 June 2010. The Laureates announced by Technology Academy Finland are Professor Sir Richard Friend from the University of Cambridge, UK (his work in the area of polymer-based electronics has brought about a revolution and paradigm shift in the optoelectronics sector), Professor of Computer Science Stephen Furber from the University of Manchester, UK (the principal designer of the ARM-32-bit RISC processor), and Professor of Chemistry Michael Grätzel from Ecole Polytechnique de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland (known as the father of third-generation dye-sensitised solar cells, referred to as Grätzel cells).
Academy awarded young students
The 2009 winners of the Academy of Finland science competition for senior secondary students have been selected. The winner of the national category was a competition entry in the field of psychology, carried out by two young students. The work was praised for its new approach, for taking into account the ethical perspectives of research, and for its excellent reasoning. The winner of the international category was a study in the field of physics, with a very challenging topic and also highly merited in its experiments. The Academy also awarded individual schools and teachers for their active involvement in the competition.
The Academy’s science competition for senior secondary students was now arranged for the twelfth time. Students can participate in the competition by preparing a study related to any subject taught at senior secondary schools. The competition provides young people with an opportunity to try their wings in the field of scientific work. With the competition, the Academy wants to show young people that the researcher’s job may be one potential career option. In 2009, the Academy received 143 competition entries from 27 senior secondary schools. A total of 162 students participated in the competition, including those submitting pair and group entries. The majority of entries were in the fields of history, psychology, the Finnish language, literature, biology, chemistry and physics.
New brochure on the research career
The Academy of Finland’s brochure Get Ahead in Your Career. Get a Doctorate has come out. The brochure outlines the many and varied opportunities of a career in science and research. It describes the career paths that are open in different organisations, introduces the four-step research career model and lists the funding opportunities available through the Academy of Finland. It also presents some personal accounts from people at different stages of the research career.
The brochure is available in PDF format on the Academy’s website at www.aka.fi/publications and it can also be ordered by email from viestinta@aka.fi.
Academy of Finland in brief: 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.