New funding opportunity for Finnish-Norwegian research collaboration

The Academy of Finland has signed a bilateral agreement with the Research Council of Norway (RCN) on funding cooperation within the framework of the International Co-Investigator Scheme.

The Scheme is aimed at supporting researcher-driven international cooperation. Under the agreement, the Academy and the RCN have agreed to mutually fund the work of the foreign research partners of their own countries’ researchers. The research projects to be funded must gain significant added value through the Finnish-Norwegian collaboration.

Riitta Maijala, Vice President for Research at the Academy of Finland, said: “If the collaborative funding application is submitted to the Academy, and if the project is funded, the money will be granted to a Finnish research organisation. The Finnish research organisation will then arrange the financial transactions with the Norwegian research organisation.”

The new funding collaboration agreement will complement the Academy’s existing European research funding opportunities.

Maijala added: “The signing of this agreement is motivated by our desire to strengthen our cooperation with countries that make significant science contributions outside the EU. It is good to prepare for new forms of research funding and changing partnerships. The experience gained through this collaboration will also be useful in future cooperation with countries outside Europe.”

Call to open as part of September 2020 call as a Targeted Academy Project call for engineering research fields

The Academy of Finland’s call within the International Co-Investigator Scheme will open in connection with the Academy’s September 2020 call. The call will be implemented as a Targeted Academy Project call in fields related to engineering. The Research Council for Natural Sciences and Engineering Research has a funding budget of up to 2 million euros for the call.

The partners applying for funding shall write an application that contains their joint research plan. The plan will be evaluated along with other applications submitted in the September 2020 call. The Research Council for Natural Sciences and Engineering Research will decide which projects will be funded.

The RCN, in turn, plans to organise three calls, one of which is a call for research project applications and two are calls for applications to the Collaborative and Knowledge-Building Project call. The application process of the RCN does not include a limitation on the field of study. The first Norwegian call closes in September 2020 (see below).

The RCN has existing collaboration agreements under the International Co-Investigator Scheme with other institutions, including the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). For the Academy of Finland, this funding cooperation agreement is the first of its kind.