Academy of Finland grants €12m towards research infrastructure development

The Finnish Research Infrastructure Committee at the Academy of Finland has granted a total of 12 million euros towards national and international research infrastructure development. The funding has been split between eight beneficiaries. The FIRI Committee intends to make more decisions on funding applications received in 2018 at its meeting in January.

Advanced and established research infrastructures were granted a total of 8.9 million euros. The funding is designed to help modernise and strengthen Finnish biobanks, medical imaging, the Finnish Biodiversity Info Facility, the mouse gene bank, the greenhouse gas monitoring system and particle physics research. These recipients are part of Finland’s research infrastructure roadmap.

Two new infrastructures were also granted funding: printed intelligence and future wireless networks, which received 3.1 million euros in total. The Printed Intelligence Infrastructure (PII) consists of the University of Oulu, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd and Tampere University of Technology, and the Research Infrastructure for Future Wireless Communication Networks (FUWIRI) consists of the University of Oulu, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd, Aalto University and Tampere University of Technology.

The Academy of Finland provides funding for the acquisition, establishment, strengthening and expansion of nationally significant research infrastructures that promote cutting-edge scientific research.

Research infrastructures refer to a reserve of instruments, equipment, information networks, databases, materials and services enabling research at various stages. Research infrastructures may be based at a single location (single-sited), scattered across several sites (distributed), or provided via a virtual platform (virtual). They can also form mutually complementary entities and networks.