Brief review of NWO's activities in 2010

Political developments in 2010, position of NWO

In June 2010, NWO presented its new strategy for 2011-2014 Growing through knowledge. In this NWO detailed its vision concerning its role and tasks within the Dutch research and innovation system.

Several months later, the Dutch Cabinet decided to focus the innovation policy on nine top sectors. In these top sectors, the Netherlands occupies an international leading position in terms of commercial activities and knowledge development. This policy direction directly affects NWO’s position and strategy. For example, NWO and KNAW no longer fall solely under the responsibility of the Ministry for Education, Culture and Science but are now the joint responsibility of this Ministry and the Ministry for Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation. Within this role, the Ministry for Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation can now shape Dutch innovation policy through NWO as well.

The tangible consequences of the Cabinet’s decisions for the new NWO strategy will not become evident until 2011. Meanwhile in 2010, NWO already decided to make an active contribution to the top sectors on the basis of Growing through Knowledge. NWO has already initiated concrete steps in this direction, such as the NWO-wide implementation of special funding instruments for valorisation.

Concrete results and strategic developments

In 2010, NWO invested 741 million euros in new research at universities and national research institutes. Almost 100 partners from the government, the private sector, and public sector bodies and civil society organisations were involved in these investments. The research funded by NWO resulted in 9657 scientific articles, 42 patents and 540 professional publications.

In 2010, NWO initiated or actively contributed to:

  • The national debate about open access, with the aim of realising open access to the latest scientific publications from publicly funded research.
  • The reorganisation of the Dutch ICT infrastructure for scientific research, together with SURF.
  • The evaluation of the existing top research schools together with the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).
  • Drafting a vision for the European Research Programme (FP8) together with KNAW and the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU).
  • Setting up a new European research organisation, Science Europe (in this period NWO chair Jos Engelen was elected as vice president of EUROHORCs).

Last year Science valued!

2010 was the last year of Science valued! 2007-2010. In that strategy period, NWO’s activities were concentrated in three lines of action: Opportunities for researchers, Consolidating strengths, and Science for society. What were the outcomes of these lines of action in 2010?

Line of action 1 – Opportunities for researchers
Opportunities for researchers is aimed at attracting and retaining young talent and at promoting excellent, groundbreaking research.

In 2010, NWO processed 3926 grant applications within this line of action and 881 of these were awarded funding. The most important grants are:

  • Innovational Research Incentives Scheme (incentive for:
    − young researchers: Veni (984 proposals, 161 funded)
    − experienced researchers: Vidi (555 proposals, 88 funded)
    − advanced researchers: Vici (215 preproposals, 104 proposals and 32 funded)
  • NWO Spinoza Prize for the best Dutch researchers (4 prizes, total 10 million euros)
  • Rubicon foreign experience for young researchers (464 proposals, 95 funded)
  • Extra incentives for women via Aspasia, Meervoud and FOm/v
  • Mosaic PhD grants for graduates from ethnic minorities (44 proposals, 21 funded)
  • Free Competition for proposals without any prior conditions (1468 proposals, 319 funded)
  • Investment Subsidy NWO Large and Investment Subsidy NWO Medium for equipment and database (71 proposals, 34 funded)

With these programmes NWO offers extra opportunities for specific scientific disciplines and/or target groups.

Line of Action 2 – Consolidating strengths
Consolidating strengths is aimed at concentrating human and material resources. The emphasis is on thematic research, large infrastructure and international collaboration.

In 2010, NWO processed 500 grant applications within this line of action and 296 of these were awarded funding. Several highlights from this line of action are:

  • NWO and SURF decided to set up the Netherlands eScience Center.
  • The Institute of Netherlands History (ING) will come under the jurisdiction of KNAW, CEME will be transferred from KNAW to NWO (effected in 2011)
  • ASTRON hosted the international SKA Forum about radio astronomy.
  • NIOZ researchers produced a record number of 200 articles in peer-reviewed journals.
  • NWO participates in 85 partnerships and international research programmes (2 Article 815/169-funding instruments, 1 European Technology Platform, 20 ERA-NETs, 18 EUROCORES and 44 Research Networking Programmes).

Line of Action 3 – Science for society
Under the heading ‘Science for society’ NWO brings together scientists and knowledge users. The aim of this is to create a better match between the needs of society and groundbreaking research. NWO realises this through temporary task forces, communication/knowledge dissemination, programming inspired by society’s needs, and to an increasing extent through Public-Private Partnership (PPS) (see the special feature about PPS in NWO’s magazine Hypothese, in Dutch).

A few examples of PPS in 2010:

  • In the National Programme Sea and Coastal Research (ZKO) NWO is collaborating with NAM (Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij) and two umbrella organisations for businesses in the offshore sector, NOGEPA (Netherlands Oil and Gas Exploration and Production Association) and IRO (Association of Dutch Suppliers in the Oil and Gas Industry).
  • In Responsible Innovation, the NWO Division for the Humanities has initiated a project aimed at the early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease in collaboration with Leiden Alzheimer Research Nederland (LeARN), the Centre for Translational Molecular Medicine (CTMM), Alzheimer Nederland, the Ministry for Health, Welfare and Sport, Philips Research and Schering Plough.
  • In Urban Regions in the Delta (URD) from the Division for the Social Sciences (from the NWO theme Connecting sustainable cities) university researchers, public organisations, government bodies and the commercial sector (including DHV, Goudappel Coffeng and the Havenbedrijf Rotterdam) are working together in consortia.
  • The temporary task force ACTS (Advanced Chemical Technology for Sustainability) has been a pioneer of public-private partnerships within NWO since February 2002. A large number of industrial partners, two government ministries and NWO have brought together more than 50 million euros in cash for four research programmes, which was later supplemented with funding from the Economic Structure Enhancing Fund (FES/Bsik).

In 2010, NWO processed 972 grant applications in this line of action of which 390 were awarded funding.

Several highlights from this line of action are:

  • The number of thematic programmes rose from 61 to 68 and the expenditure from 30 million euros to almost 57 million euros (770 proposals, 307 funded).
  • In the thematic programmes from the strategy period 2001-2005 almost 30 million euros was invested (143 proposals, 44 funded).
  • The temporary task forces ACTS, NGI and NIHC fund and direct research in the Netherlands within their own specific domains. (ICTRegie was disbanded at the end of 2010.)
  • NWO reached a broad public with initiatives such as the commercial book publication EXPERIMENT NL (in cooperation with the monthly science magazine Quest), the series of lectures Spinoza te Paard by Spinoza Prize laureates and the traditional National Science Quiz, broadcast on television by the VPRO at Christmas.
last modified on 31 August 2011