Academy of Finland – NIH joint call 2023: thematic areas of the Finnish Research Flagships

1 November 2022
see below for details
up to 5 years
Pending
  • In this joint call, the application procedure differs from a typical Academy of Finland call. Please study the procedure in section ‘Background and objectives’ in detail before starting preparations to apply.
  • Applicants from Finland can participate in NIH R01 funding opportunities with proposal due dates of 5 February (R01 new) and 5 March 2023 (R01 renewal, resubmission, revision). These deadlines correspond to NIH application cycle I.
  • Intention to Submit’ must be sent by the PI from Finland to the Academy as early as possible and at least ten weeks before the NIH call deadline, and the close-to-final draft proposal at least six weeks before the NIH call deadline. The final proposal is submitted to the NIH by the US PI.
  • Academy funding will be granted only for proposals that receive a ‘Confirmation of Eligibility for Funding’ letter from the Academy and are selected for funding in the respective NIH funding call.
  • The funding to be distributed through this call depends on the Finnish Parliament’s decision to allocate the necessary funds to the Academy in its budget for 2023. In case of delays in the processing of the applications resulting in the need to commit the Academy’s budget for 2024 to this call, the funding to be distributed will depend on the Finnish Parliament’s decision to allocate the necessary funds to the Academy in its budget for 2024.

The AKA-NIH Partnership Programme, launched in November 2020, is an initiative between the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Academy of Finland (AKA). Under the Programme, a ‘single-proposal, single-review’ mechanism is facilitated by the NIH through their existing grants programmes. From the perspective of AKA, all proposals submitted under the auspices of the Partnership must have significant research involvement from researchers from both countries. Funding will be provided for collaborative research activities falling within the missions of participating NIH Institutes and Centers and the thematic areas of AKA Finnish Research Flagships.

The application procedure, which should be studied in detail before starting preparations to apply, is described in detail in the section ‘Background and objectives’. The following steps are included in the application procedure for researchers from Finland:

  1. Notification of Intention to Submit: The Intention to Submit is emailed to AKA at flagship@aka.fi as early as possible and no later than ten weeks before the NIH R01 call deadline. AKA pre-assesses the eligibility of the project. If assessed eligible, the applicant is invited to submit a close‐to‐final draft of the full proposal to AKA.

  2. Draft proposal submission and cut-off stage: The close-to-final proposal must be submitted to AKA no later than six weeks before the NIH R01 call deadline. Following submission of the close-to-final draft proposal, AKA will assess the proposal and, if supportive, provide a ‘Confirmation of Eligibility for Funding’ letter to the Finnish applicant for inclusion in the full proposal submission to the NIH.

If the total requested funding in the close-to-final draft proposals significantly exceeds the available funding, AKA will select the proposals it will support and issue ‘Confirmation of Eligibility for Funding’ letters for the selected proposals. After this cut-off stage AKA may no longer issue new letters.

  1. Submitting application to the NIH: The US proposer submits the final proposal including the ‘Confirmation of Eligibility for Funding’ letter to the appropriate NIH programme for review. The proposal is reviewed in accordance with the standard NIH merit review criteria of intellectual merit and broader impacts of the proposed effort. AKA has agreed to accept the assessments of the NIH with regard to the suitability for funding of individual proposals.

The requirements in this call announcement relate only to applicants applying for funding from AKA.

Before you fill in the application in the online services (SARA), carefully read the call text and the ‘Read more’ section, especially the funding terms and conditions. If the call text and the funding terms and conditions conflict, the terms and conditions should always be considered primary. This call text is published only in English.

Read the full call text on this page.

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