Academy of Finland grants €12m for building and upgrading research infrastructures

On 21 January 2020, the Finnish Research Infrastructure Committee at the Academy of Finland decided to grant a total of 11.9 million euros for building and upgrading national research infrastructures. The funding is divided between six research infrastructures. The total funding granted for research infrastructures under the 2019 call comes to some 26 million euros.

The funding will be used to strengthen the preconditions for seismological, geomagnetic and geodetic research, an infrastructure for structural cell biology, and the coordination and development of the bioeconomy. In addition, the funding goes towards establishing the head office of the ACTRIS research infrastructure in Finland.

The funded research infrastructures also include a new initiative: INAR RI Agriculture. It is a project to set up a state-of-the-art research network in Finland to study the climate and air quality impacts in northern agricultural lands. INAR RI Agriculture involves the University of Helsinki, the Finnish Meteorological Institute, the University of Eastern Finland and Natural Resources Institute Finland.

The Academy of Finland provides funding for the acquisition and establishment of nationally significant research infrastructures that promote high-quality scientific research and for upgrading and expanding existing services.

Research infrastructures refer to a reserve of research instruments, equipment, data, materials and services that enables research, promotes research collaboration and reinforces research and innovation capacity. Research infrastructures may be single-sited, distributed or virtual, or a combination of these.