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

The AKA-NIH Partnership Programme, launched in November 2020, is an initiative involving funding agencies from Finland and the United States of America (US). In Finland, the partner agency is the Academy of Finland (AKA). In the US, the partner agency is the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The NIH consists of multiple Institutes, Centers and Offices, which receive applications for various grant types and durations. Under the AKA-NIH Programme, a ‘single-proposal, single-review’ mechanism is facilitated by the NIH through their existing grant 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.

In Finland, the Partnership is managed by the AKA Flagship Programme Subcommittee. The Subcommittee oversees the strategic and operational aspects of the Finnish partners and guides, monitors and evaluates their collaborative efforts.

The overall goal of the AKA-NIH Partnership Programme is to increase research collaboration between Finland and the US. This collaboration aims to generate valuable discoveries and innovations that will lead to enhancements in multiple areas of science and technology and that are within the goals and interests of AKA and the NIH – for instance, population health and disease prevention.

The Partnership will achieve its goals by leveraging existing funding opportunity announcements (FOAs), application receipt and peer review mechanisms of the NIH while supporting the research components conducted by Finnish investigators through funding by AKA. No specific call for proposals will be issued from the NIH, since NIH grant programmes are focused on scientific investigations by the best teams or researchers, many of which include international partnerships. Funding agencies fund the elements of joint, integrated research projects undertaken in their own country. The collaborative projects will be evaluated according to standard NIH review criteria: significance, investigator(s), innovation, approach and scientific environment. More details on NIH peer review and review criteria are available online.

To be eligible for submission to the NIH with a ‘Confirmation of Eligibility for Funding’ letter from AKA, the project must provide significant added value that is not achievable by the Finnish principal investigator (PI) working alone. Funding through AKA will be provided for applications that are selected for funding by the NIH through their standard procedures. No special consideration will be given to collaborative AKA-NIH proposals: AKA-NIH proposals will compete head-to-head with non-AKA-NIH partnership proposals submitted to the same funding opportunity at the NIH. Even though the Finnish components are paid for by AKA, projects are expected to adhere to NIH grant requirements for disclosure of financial conflicts of interest, data and resource sharing, and publications (more details on the requirements are available online).

To be eligible for consideration for AKA funding within the Partnership, support will be provided on relevant thematic areas in which Finland has widespread demonstrated expertise, represented by the thematic areas of the Finnish Research Flagships:

• Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• Digital Precision Cancer Medicine
• Inequalities, Interventions and New Welfare State
• Materials Bioeconomy
• Photonics
• Wireless Communication Technologies
• Forest-Human-Machine Interplay
• Atmosphere and Climate
• Gene, Cell and Nano Therapy
• Immune System

How the Programme works – study in detail before starting preparations to apply

The applicants from both countries will write a joint proposal in the R01 format required by the NIH. It is the responsibility of the US partner to submit the proposal to the NIH for review. In this joint call, 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). The NIH’s funding opportunities are available online. See also the NIH’s announcement of the Partnership (note that some information in the announcement from 2020 may be outdated). An introduction to NIH grants process and application procedure is also available online.

It is required that the Finnish researchers participating in the joint research project will submit a proposal separately to AKA in accordance with the guidelines in this call text.

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.

3. 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 steps are described in detail below.

1.     Notification of Intention to Submit

In order to be considered for funding by AKA, eligible applicants (see section ‘Who can apply’) must have identified a US collaborator who is willing to develop a joint grant application. The Finnish principal investigator (PI) must send a mandatory ‘Intention to Submit’ form to AKA using the template provided. The document must be submitted to AKA as early as possible and at least ten weeks before the corresponding NIH full proposal deadline.

For proposals targeting ‘R01 new’ and ‘R01 renewal, resubmission, revision’ opportunities, the ten-week deadlines are 28 November 2022 and 28 December 2022, respectively.

The information required is summarised below and the ‘Intention to Submit’ form can be accessed here. Please submit the form to flagship@aka.fi.

• Contact details of the PIs from both countries
• US Target Institute/Centre, Target programme/FOA/call, submission deadline
• Proposed topic, keywords, collaboration and links to the thematic areas of one or more of the Finnish Research Flagships. Description of how the project will advance the goals of the Flagship Programme.
• Indicative costs to be requested from AKA
• Indicative total budget figure to be requested from the US funder

The information in the form will be used for planning purposes, including a preliminary eligibility assessment, by AKA. The eligibility assessment may take up to two weeks and the applicant will be informed of the result of the assessment.

If assessed eligible, the applicant is invited to submit a close‐to‐final draft of the full proposal to AKA. The close-to-final proposal must be submitted to AKA no later than six weeks before the NIH R01 call deadline. It is important to note that draft full proposals (see below) will not be accepted if the ‘Intention to Submit’ form has not been submitted within the specified timeframe.

2.     Draft proposal submission and cut-off stage

A close‐to‐final draft of the full proposal (i.e. a version of the proposal being prepared) for submission to the NIH, in NIH format, must be submitted to AKA via the AKA online services at least six weeks before the corresponding NIH deadline. Draft proposals will only be accepted from applicants who have submitted an ‘Intention to Submit’ form no later than ten weeks before the NIH submission deadline.

For proposals targeting ‘R01 new’ and ‘R01 renewal, resubmission, revision’ opportunities, the six-week deadlines are 28 December 2022 and 23 January 2023, respectively.

Applicants should prepare their proposal in collaboration with the US investigator(s) and based on the guidelines and criteria outlined in the relevant NIH programme call and associated documentation. AKA will accept a draft version of the proposal in NIH format. For more details on submitting a draft proposal to AKA, please refer to the section ‘Application parts and guidelines’.

Following submission of the draft proposal, AKA will assess the proposal to:

• verify the eligibility of the Finnish applicant(s)
• determine if there is evidence of significant participation by partners from both countries
• confirm that the topic links to the thematic areas of the Finnish Research Flagships and that the project advances the goals of the Flagship Programme
• if supportive (see ‘Cut-off stage’ below), pre‐approve the budget for the project and provide a ‘Confirmation of Eligibility for Funding’ letter to the Finnish applicant for inclusion in the full proposal submission to the NIH.

The ‘Confirmation of Eligibility for Funding’ letter will outline the level of budget commitment subject to the NIH selecting the proposal for funding following established NIH grant review/selection processes. AKA will issue a single ‘Confirmation of Eligibility for Funding’ letter to the AKA applicant(s), who is/are responsible for ensuring its inclusion in the final proposal submission to the NIH by the US PI.

Please note that the Finnish site(s) of research must commit to administering and funding the project before the ‘Confirmation of Eligibility for Funding’ will be provided. Read more about the commitment by the site of research.

Cut-off stage:

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.

The possible selections will be made after the six-week deadline for the received close-to-final draft proposals. The following will be taken into account when making the selections:

• availability of AKA budget authority
• Regardless of the different deadlines, applications targeting the R01 new (NIH deadline 5 February) and R01 renewal, resubmission, revision (NIH deadline 5 March) opportunities will be processed as a single batch to make sure there is budget authority available for both opportunities. Thus, when making selections on applications targeting the R01 new opportunity, the expected number and funding requested (based on the received notifications of Intention to Submit) of applications targeting the R01 renewal, resubmission, revision opportunity will also be taken into account.
• maximising diversity of the programme in terms of research topics
• assessment of how well the project is expected to advance the goals of the Flagship Programme.
• AKA’s criteria for research funding decisions and other policies that guide AKA activities (e.g. prioritising applicants in the gender minority in the case of projects of equal merit).

AKA aims to inform the applicant(s) within four weeks of close-to-final application submission whether the ‘Confirmation of Eligibility for Funding’ letter is issued for their application.

After this cut-off stage AKA may no longer issue new letters.

If, after issuance of the ‘Confirmation of Eligibility for Funding’ letter, the applicants decide not to submit their final proposal to the NIH, they are requested to notify AKA.

3.     Submission of final proposal to the NIH

The US partner will be responsible for submitting the final proposal including the ‘Confirmation of Eligibility for Funding’ letter to the NIH via their institution. Please note that the US institution has full responsibility over the conduct of the project, the reporting requirements to the NIH and adherence to all requirements and expectations for NIH grant awards. Requirements for financial conflict of interest, publication and data and resource sharing apply to foreign components of research grants, whether they receive NIH funding or not (more details on the requirements are available online).

The collaborative AKA-NIH projects will be evaluated according to standard NIH review criteria: significance, investigator(s), innovation, approach and environment. More details on NIH peer review and review criteria are available online. The final assessment on the scientific merit of the proposal lies with the NIH peer review process. AKA has agreed to accept the assessments of the NIH with regard to the suitability for funding of individual proposals.

The timeline for application processing after submission to R01 opportunities at NIH is available online.

Applicants are recommended to contact AKA early on to check national eligibility requirements.

The funding from AKA may be applied for by individual research teams or consortia composed of two or more research teams from Finnish research organisations. The consortium parties may represent one or several research organisations.

A consortium application is an application built around a joint research plan, where each party to the consortium applies for funding. The Academy of Finland treats the consortium application as a single application, although the funding is granted to each subproject separately. Consortium compositions cannot be changed after the call deadline. Read the guidelines for consortium applications.

In addition to a doctoral degree, the PI of the proposed project must also have other significant scientific merits. Usually the PI is a researcher at the professor or docent (adjunct professor) level. These criteria also apply to subproject PIs in consortia. In addition, the applicant must have a close connection with Finland to support the implementation of a multi-year project. This connection must be evident from the application.

The PI of the application cannot be changed while the application is being processed at the Academy (after the call has closed but before the decision). The only exception to this is if the PI dies.

Special terms and restrictions

To be eligible for consideration by AKA, each proposal must have a minimum of one applicant from Finland and the US, and significant research participation by both countries. The collaborative projects must add significant added value that is not achievable by the PI working alone, and the topics proposed must fall under the thematic areas of the Finnish Research Flagships. The PI does not need to be affiliated with any of the Flagships. Emphasis should also be placed on the PIs having relevant experience in their field of research, in addition to degree requirements.

A PI requesting funding from AKA can have only one active AKA-NIH partnership proposal. A proposal is considered active from its submission until the date of the funding decision.

Applicants with ongoing funding from previous AKA–NIH joint calls are not eligible to apply for funding from the present call.

If the application includes cooperation with Russia or Belarus, you must take into account the Academy’s policies on the matter.

Members of the Board, research councils and the Strategic Research Council of AKA will not be granted AKA funding during their terms.

Funding cannot be granted to a person who has participated in the planning of the call to an extent likely to give them a comparative advantage over other applicants.

We will not process an application if the applicant has been found guilty of research misconduct in the three years preceding the year of the call.

Finnish collaborations with US institutions for the NIH Research Project Grant Program (R01) are supported under this joint call. The maximum project duration is five years. The funding period must be within the funding period identified in the NIH grant mechanism to which the full proposal is submitted for. The recommended project start date is 1 January 2024.

The site of research is a Finnish organisation (usually a university or research institute) via which the funding is paid. The maximum funding granted for a five-year project is 750,000 euros.

Funding from the Academy is primarily intended towards the salaries of researchers who work full-time on the project and for other project costs. The PI’s salary costs may, under certain limitations, be incorporated into the total project costs. Read more about the salary of the research project’s PI on the AKA website.

Significant oversubscription of the available AKA funding budget for the collaborative AKA-NIH projects will be restricted at the cut-off stage. For more details on how the programme works, see section “Background and objectives”.

The funding to be distributed through this call depends on the Finnish Parliament’s decision to allocate the necessary funds to AKA 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 close-to-final draft application must contain a funding plan drafted in line with the full cost model, including the funding to be applied for from AKA (up to 70% of the total project costs). Read more about the full cost model.

Academy funding cannot be used for economic activity. Read more about the eligibility of economic operators.

Research team salaries

As a rule, staff hired with Academy research funding must have an employment relationship. We recommend that they be hired for a period of employment no shorter than the funding period, unless a shorter contract is necessary for special reasons dictated by the implementation of the research project. Short-term research, studies or other assignments (max. duration six months) may also be carried out in the form of outsourced services.

What is required from the site of research?

We require that the site of research (i.e. the applicant’s host organisation, e.g. a university, research institute or other research organisation) provides the research project with all necessary basic facilities. These are determined based on the nature of the research and are the same as those available to other research staff at the site: office and laboratory premises, equipment (incl. computer equipment), and telecommunications, telephone, mailing, copying and library services. When accepting the funding, the site of research is responsible for ensuring that necessary statements and permits from ethics committees have been obtained before the start of the project.

The costs of ensuring immediate open access to peer-reviewed articles are included in the overheads of the site of research and are thus part of the basic facilities provided by the site. The costs associated with storing and sharing research data are regarded as overheads for the project’s site of research. Only exceptionally and for justified reasons can they be accepted as research costs to be covered by Academy research funding. The site of research also commits to ensuring that the data management plan can be implemented at the site of research, and that the measures to be taken comply with good data management practice. After a positive funding decision, the site of research will also approve the data management plan of the project. Read more in the guidelines on the commitment by the site of research.

The application must also include the overheads percentage, indirect employee costs and coefficient for effective working hours of the site of research. The site of research will see to that this information is kept up to date in the online services. The information is provided as percentages.

When the site of research is a university or a research institute, as a rule, the funding must be applied for VAT included. Consult the financial administration at the site of research for more information. The Academy’s funding may also cover VAT costs, but only on certain conditions (see Value added tax and read more in the funding terms and conditions).

After a positive funding decision, the site of research will also approve the data management plan of the project.

Funding plan

In the close‐to‐final draft application, provide a cost estimate including an estimate of the annual amount of funding needed, itemised by type of expenditure. Also include a funding plan that shows all funding granted for the project as well as funding that will be provided by the site of research if the project is launched. Before submitting your application, you must agree with the administration at your own organisation on the contribution of the site of research to the funding of the project. Only costs that pass through the books of the site of the research must be included in the total costs. You must check with your own organisation whether the funding planned as the own funding contribution suits this purpose.

The funding applied for from AKA must not exceed 70% of the total project costs. The cost estimate must be realistic.

The PI’s salary costs may, under certain limitations, be incorporated into the total project costs. Read more about the salary of the research project’s PI on the AKA website.

All research costs must be justified in the free-text field in the online services under ‘Funding for the project’.

How to submit and supplement the application

During this joint call, 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).

The Finnish PI must send a mandatory ‘Intention to Submit’ form to AKA as early as possible and at least ten weeks before the corresponding full proposal deadline at the NIH. A close‐to‐final draft of the full proposal for submission to the NIH must be submitted to AKA via the AKA online services at least six weeks before the NIH deadline. Draft proposals will only be accepted from applicants who have submitted an ‘Intention to Submit’ form no later than ten weeks before the corresponding NIH submission deadline. The deadlines also apply to consortia. For more details, study how the programme works in the section ‘Background and objectives’.

Make sure to submit the application in good time before the deadline. The system will only accept applications that contain all obligatory information. The joint consortium application is submitted by the consortium PI. The PI can submit the consortium application only after all subprojects have tagged their applications as complete.

You can edit and supplement the application until the deadline. You can make changes to a submitted application (e.g. change appendices), but you must make them before the deadline. If you notice that your application lacks important information after the deadline, immediately get in touch with the call’s contact person, so that they can reopen the application for you. Make sure to re-submit the application after you have supplemented it. We will consider the supplemented information insofar as it is possible in view of the review and decision-making process.

We may ask you to supplement the application. If you do not supplement the application by the given deadline, we may decide not to process it. You must make sure that your contact details (email address) are up to date.

How the application becomes pending

According to section 17 of the Finnish Administrative Procedure Act and section 8 of the Act on Electronic Services and Communication in the Public Sector, the sender is responsible for the application arriving by the set deadline. An application becomes pending at AKA when the online application and the obligatory appendices have been submitted in the online services. The system will confirm a successful submission by sending an email to the address you have provided.

If you have not submitted a final report on a completed or ongoing AKA-funded project by the set deadline, we may decide not to process your application.

An application will not be processed if the applicant or the application does not meet the competence requirements or other key requirements, or if the application otherwise does not qualify for processing. A decision-making body may decide not to process and not to fund an application based on science policy objectives or if it is apparent for some other reason that the applicant cannot receive funding with the submitted application. Read more about the circumstances that may cause us not to process an application.

Publicity and data protection

Except for the research plan, plan of intent, abstract and progress report, which are primarily confidential, the application and its appendices are public documents. For example, the CV is a public document and as such must not include any confidential information. This publicity is based on the Finnish Act on the Openness of Government Activities. The Academy of Finland is committed to following regulations on data protection. The applicant is responsible for the disclosure of the personal data contained in the application and, where appropriate, for requesting the consent of the parties concerned. The GDPR-compliant privacy statement concerning the research funding process is available on the Academy website under Data protection.

The applicants from both countries will write a joint proposal in the R01 format required by the NIH. It is the responsibility of the US partner to submit the proposal to the NIH for review.

In order to be considered for funding by AKA, eligible applicants must have identified a US collaborator willing to develop a joint grant application. The PI from Finland must send a mandatory ‘Intention to Submit’ form to AKA using the template provided. The document must be submitted to AKA as early as possible and at least ten weeks before the corresponding full proposal deadline at the NIH. For more details, please refer to the section ‘Background and objectives’ of the call text.

A close‐to‐final draft of the full proposal for submission to the NIH, in NIH format, must be submitted to AKA via the AKA online services at least six weeks before the corresponding NIH deadline. Draft proposals will only be accepted from applicants who have submitted an ‘Intention to Submit’ form no later than ten weeks before the NIH deadline.

Applicants should prepare their proposal in collaboration with the US investigator(s) and based on the guidelines and criteria outlined in the relevant NIH programme call and associated documentation. AKA will accept a draft version of the proposal in NIH format; however, the information listed below must be provided upon submission via the AKA online services for AKA to accurately and fairly assess the level of support required.

Most of the links below take you to the A–Z index of application guidelines.

The online application contains the following parts

Personal data

• Personal details
• Degrees (most recent one first); parental leaves etc. may be filled in under ‘Additional information’
• Titles of docent and professorships

CV

• Maximum length three pages
• CV following the template

Consortium parties (if applicable)

• Note that the US collaborator is not listed as a consortium party here, but on the ‘Collaborators’ tab
• Details on each party (name, email address, organisation and country)
• Read the guidelines for consortium applications.

General information

• Details on the site of research
• Title of research project in English and Finnish/Swedish
• Research fields (at least one, no more than five). See the research field classification.
• Keywords in English and Finnish/Swedish

Abstract

• Maximum length 2,500 characters including spaces
• Provide target NIH Institute/Centre, call (either R01 new or R01 renewal, resubmission, revision) and submission deadline here.
• Provide brief description of 1) the distribution of work between the PI(s) from Finland and the US collaborator(s), 2) how the topic links to the thematic areas of the Finnish Research Flagships, and 3) how the project advances the goals of the Flagship Programme.
• See guidelines on the abstract.

Most relevant publications and other key outputs

• The PI/consortium PI enters up to ten of their own/the consortium’s own most important project-relevant publications and up to ten of their own/the consortium’s own research outputs, with justifications.
• You can retrieve publication details from the VIRTA publication information service. Also see our how-to guide for the online services.
• There are separate fields for selected publications and other research outputs. If the desired output type is not listed, select ‘Other, what?’ and enter the name of the output.
• Details on publications may also be entered manually. Obligatory information: author(s), title, year of publication, name of series/journal, type of publication (the type will not show in the PDF version of the application).
• The information is used to assess the competence of the applicant or consortium to carry out the project.

Mobility

• Describe planned national and international mobility within the project, itemised by person.
• See more information on mobility.

Collaborators

• Project collaborators, itemised by collaborator (name, organisation, country). Note that the US collaborator should be listed here.
• We recommend that applicants append a letter of collaboration to the application only from possible non-US collaborators. Read more about the letter.

Affiliations

• Research infrastructures: Indicate what kinds of equipment, resources or data reserves provided by national or international research infrastructures the project plans to use. The menu includes infrastructures included in Finland’s national roadmap and/or ESFRI’s roadmap. Other possible infrastructures are entered in a free-text field. Read more about research infrastructures.
• Centres of Excellence in Research: Read more about Centres of Excellence.
• Finnish Flagships: Read more about the Finnish Flagship Programme.

Research ethics

• Preliminary ethical review for project and/or animal testing permit (yes/no)
• Found guilty of research misconduct (yes/no). We will not process a funding application if the applicant has been found guilty of research misconduct in the three years preceding the year of the call.
• Guilty of illegal employment within the meaning referred to in section 7(2) of the Act on Discretionary Government Transfers (yes/no)
• The research ethics description is entered under section 4 of the research plan.
• See the ethical guidelines.

Funding for the project

• The project’s funding follows the full cost model. The AKA funding contribution to the research costs comes to no more than 70%.
• Before you can fill in the cost estimate, you must first select the site of research on the tab ‘General information’.
• The site of research maintains the following percentages: effective working hours, indirect employee costs, overheads percentage and VAT. The information is provided as percentages.
• Enter the funding period.
• Enter salaries and other costs.
• Enter other funding sources and their funding contributions. You must immediately notify us if you receive funding from other sources for the same purpose after your application to AKA has been submitted.
• Justify the funding to be applied for. The cost estimate must be realistic.
• Only under certain limitations and on justifiable grounds may the project PI’s salary for project management and/or research included in the application. The justifications are entered on the tab ‘Salary of principal investigator’ in the online services. Read more in the call text under ‘Funding to be applied for and funding period’.
• Consult the administration at your site of research when filling in budget details. Read more about the funding in the call text under ‘Funding to be applied for and funding period’.
• The commitment of the site of research is a requirement for the granting of funding. Make sure you have a commitment from your site of research (usually a university or research institute) to supporting the project. Read more in the guidelines on the commitment by the site of research.

Salary of principal investigator

• Justifications, if salary costs for the PI are included in the funding plan
• The PI’s salary costs may, under certain limitations, be incorporated into the total project costs: for project management and/or research.
• If the PI does not have a permanent employment relationship, include a salary plan for the PI for the entire funding period.
• Read more in the call text under ‘Funding to be applied for and funding period’.

Public project description

• Maximum length 1,000 characters including spaces
• Popular and reader-friendly description of the research project in English and Finnish/Swedish.
• We will use the project description in our communications on the funded research project. It is important that the public description is written for a general audience. The project description is also stored at research.fi, a service that makes available information on research conducted in Finland.
• Read the guidelines on the public project description.

Progress report

• If you have ongoing Academy funding or completed projects for which no final report has yet been submitted, the projects to be reported are available on a separate tab in the online services. This does not apply to applicants acting as the responsible person in funding schemes where the funding recipient is an organisation or to applicants who are subproject PIs in consortia.
• Maximum length per project is 1,500 characters including spaces.
• Describe the progress and/or key achievements of the project and how the project is related to the funding being applied for.
• Read more about drafting the report.
• Also see the How-to guides for the online services.

Appendices

• Appendices must be PDF files.

Obligatory appendices:

• A close‐to‐final draft of the full proposal (research plan) for submission to the NIH, in NIH format. In case of a consortium application, this document is provided only by the consortium PI. Additional NIH forms (budgets, etc.) are not needed.
• Complete list of publications.  Read the guidelines on the structure of the list of publications.
• Free-form commitment by site of research in which the site commits to administering and funding the project. Make sure you have a commitment from your site of research (usually a university or research institute) to supporting the project. Read more in the guidelines on the commitment by site of research.

Case-specific appendices:

• Letter of collaboration. Read more about the letter.
• We recommend that applicants append a letter of collaboration to the application only from possible non-US collaborators.

Authorisation

• You can authorise another person to supplement or view your application.
• Start by entering the person’s name in the field. If the person has an account in the online services (SARA), they can be selected from the list.
• The person must have an account in the Academy’s online services (SARA).
• You cannot authorise more than one person at a time to edit a field in your application, and you cannot edit that same field while the authorisation is active.
• Do not authorise yourself.
• See technical instructions on the authorisation process in the how-to guides for the online services.

Submit application

• You can submit the application when you have filled in or attached all the necessary information.
• The joint consortium application is submitted by the consortium PI. The PI can submit the consortium application only after all subprojects have tagged their applications as complete.
• A red warning triangle on the tab tells you that information is missing.
• You can supplement the application until the six-week limit. Resaving will replace the earlier version.
• If you want to supplement the application after the six-week limit, please get in touch with the Academy’s contact persons listed in the call text.

Under the Programme, a ‘single-proposal, single-review’ mechanism is facilitated by the NIH through existing NIH grants programmes. Accordingly, the scientific review will not be carried out by AKA. For more details on the NIH review procedure, see section ‘Background and objectives’.

After scientific merit review of the AKA-NIH proposals has been carried out at NIH, we may invite applicants from Finland to upload the review report received from NIH as additional information to the close-to-final draft proposal submitted to the Academy.

Funding decisions at AKA will be made by the Flagship Programme Subcommittee.

Applicants from Finland participating in successful applications may be invited to append their existing applications (close‐to‐final draft of the full proposal) in the AKA online services with the final NIH version of the submitted proposal and the review report provided on the proposal. It is the responsibility of the applicant from Finland to request these documents from the US applicant.

You will receive an email notification after the funding decision has been made. After receiving the email, you can log in to the online services with your user ID to view the decision and its justifications.

How to receive the funding

A positive funding decision is accompanied by the funding terms and conditions. Make sure to check the decision and accept the funding and its terms in the online services without delay. This must be done via the AKA online services within eight weeks of the decision date, unless otherwise stated in the special conditions of the decision notification.

If necessary, update the popular project description before you accept the funding. It is important that the public description is written for a general audience. Make changes to the annual instalments, if necessary (see the instructions in the Academy’s funding terms and conditions), and append the full data management plan (in consortium applications only consortium PIs do this). Once you have accepted the funding, the system will send a notification to the commitment issuer at the site of research. That person must also accept the granted funding. See the how-to guide: Decision notification, review reports and accepting funding.

The funds can be paid only after the applicant and the representative of the site of research have accepted them. The system will then notify the funding to the finance administration of the site of research, whereupon the funds will be ready to use.

• Jukka Tanskanen, Senior Science Adviser
• Maiju Gyran, Senior Science Adviser

flagship(at)aka.fi.

Feedback and questions