Themes for strategic research in 2022 decided

The Finnish Government has decided the themes for the strategic research programmes to be launched next year.

The two themes are:

• Children and young people – healthy, thriving and capable makers of the future
• Security and trust in the age of algorithms.

The cross-cutting priority in both themes is equality.

The Strategic Research Council (SRC) will open multi-year research programmes around these themes. Professor Kimmo Nuotio, SRC Chair, said that the SRC is preparing to launch one programme for each theme.

“The themes are highly topical, and we hope that they will inspire researchers to seek and find new perspectives. For example, trust is now expressed in the themes in a slightly different context than what we are used to,” Nuotio says.

The SRC funds long-term and scientifically high-level research aimed at finding solutions to major challenges facing Finnish society through multidisciplinary and interactive approaches. From the projects to be funded, the SRC expects active interaction between knowledge producers and knowledge users, covering the entire life cycle of the research.

The call text and guidelines will be published in early November (TBC) on the Academy of Finland’s website. The first call stage will be open until early January 2022.