The Finnish Research Impact Foundation is awarding funding to seven top-tier research projects for research conducted in collaboration with companies. These projects have been selected based on their potential to deliver significant new insights that benefit both science and Finnish businesses.
The FRIF will fund joint research between research organizations and companies with 1,5 million euros through its spring 2024 call for proposals. This year’s Tandem Industry Academia Postdoc funding call marks the fifth time the foundation has offered this program. Since 2020, the foundation has awarded over 10 million euros to a total of 56 projects.
The funding is directed at Finnish universities and research organizations to encourage collaboration with the Finnish business sector. The foundation aims to enhance the impact of world-class science and research on society through its funding.
The newly funded projects address several societally significant challenges. These include exploring the reconciliation of forestry and environmental protection, understanding the lifecycle emissions of Finland’s road infrastructure, involving logistics service providers in circular economy business models, and addressing bottlenecks in drug development.
The research teams receiving funding come from the following institutions: Åbo Akademi University, the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke), Aalto University, Hanken School of Economics, and the University of Helsinki.
The partner companies will contribute their research and development expertise and industry-specific insights. These companies include Bayer, Valio, Ramboll Finland, Posti, Metsähallitus Metsätalous, Arbonaut ja Bittium Biosignals.
“Funding from the Finnish Research Impact Foundation offers a unique opportunity for Research and Technological Development by bridging the needs and expertise between academia and industry. The funding process is competitive and overall very straightforward”, says Shrikanth Kulashekhar, a postdoctoral researcher involved in a project developing a tool for dementia risk screening.
at Aalto University and Bittium Biosignals Oy.
More information about the funded projects can be found here.
The foundation received a total of 61 high-quality applications for the call that ended on April 14, 2024, from which the board of directors decided to fund seven projects.
In 2023, the FRIF paid particular attention to encouraging industry-academia collaboration of the social sciences, humanities and arts. The foundation conducted an extensive study on the current state of industry-academia collaboration and focused its communication efforts on research organizations in these fields.
“The topics of the applications submitted to the foundation have diversified, and the range of disciplines has slightly expanded, which is what we aimed for. The quality of applications has remained high every year. A significant portion of the applications still comes from fields traditionally involved in industry collaboration, such as engineering and medicine, but we have now seen that business studies and multidisciplinary researchers, for example in environmental research, have also discovered our funding,” says Lauri Oksanen, chairman of the foundation’s board.
In the Tandem Industry Academia funding program, a researcher representing a university or research institution conducts one year of research related to the project within an academic organization and another year in closer collaboration with the partner company.
New funding to open in September for international top researchers who have recently arrived in Finland
On September 2, 2024, the FRIF will pilot a new funding program aimed at researchers who have recently entered the Finnish funding system. The goal of this funding is to initiate and accelerate the research work and industry collaboration of top talents who have come to Finland. The new TIA Seed call seeks significant breakthroughs that will contribute to the development of Finnish expertise.
“The foundation has recognized that top researchers who have recently arrived in Finland need special support to integrate into the Finnish research funding system and society. Our contribution to this is kick-start funding to boost industry collaboration in Finland. Researchers who have recently come to Finland from abroad do not have the same networks and opportunities as those who have been working here longer,” says Oksanen.
Alongside the new TIA Seed call, the foundation’s TIA Professor call will also open, intended for professors to conduct one year of research within a company.
