NWO Themes

Sustainable Earth
The pervasive human impact of on this Earth is becoming increasingly noticeable almost everywhere in the world. We are talking about the impact on our climate, environment and ecosystems with repercussions for safety, the fight against poverty, economic development, public health and wellbeing. In order to encourage an effective approach, integrated scientific research into cause and effect is required both concerning society, and concerning complex natural systems. The resulting new information will have to be translated into scenarios and solutions.
The NWO theme Sustainable Earth is intended to emphasise an integrated, multidisciplinary approach with contributions of the natural, technical and social sciences in the following three research areas: Energy and emissions; Changes in the climate system; Man and environment: natural resources and biodiversity, water, rivers, coastal zones. The resulting information should contribute to policy development and innovation.

Brain and Cognition
In our knowledge-intensive society, the gathering, processing and transmitting of knowledge is essential. Continuous learning and adaptation processes are necessary to anticipate on coming changes. In our ageing society, the number of brain diseases is on the increase, therefore better treatment and prevention of brain disorders will be necessary.
Recent scientific breakthroughs have shown that cerebral and psychological processes share a common denominator, which makes it possible to integrate the behavioural sciences with the knowledge of cerebral functions and molecular and cellular processes. Many Dutch neuroscientists and cognition scientists enjoy an excellent international reputation and take part in complex, large international cooperation networks.
This thematic programme is widely supported and aims at an optimum integration and cooperation of various types of research: health research, health-care research, medical, cognition and behavioural sciences, linguistics and information technology.

Systems biology
it is essential to understand how living systems work to comprehend the development of animals and plants, for instance, or to develop effective new drugs. Organisms operate on the basis of complicated, interrelated networks of processes at various levels: the genes, proteins and metabolic products within a cell interact with each other in very complex ways. The same applies to cells inside an organ, organs inside an organism and organisms inside a population and among different populations.
The essence of systems biology is to find out quantitatively how molecules, organelles, cells, organs and organisms cooperate in space and time to make the biological processes run smoothly. It will therefore be necessary to integrate all the results of experiments that were done by means of various different technologies and methods. This requires cooperation between biologists, chemists, physicists, mathematicians, information scientists, physicians as well as large-scale data integration.

Nanoscience and Nanotechnology
Nanoscience – research on and into materials and processes at a scale even smaller than the microscale – may have major repercussions in many areas of our society, for instance in the fields of energy, health, safety, communication, jurisdiction and food. Currently a joint venture of physicists, chemists, technologists, biologist and medical scientists is planning three strategic lines of research: nanomedicine, micro-electronics that go beyond silicon technology and nanoparticles with patterns on a nanoscale. The main challenge in biological science is to expand our knowledge in particular for the benefit of nanomedicine, for instance the interactions of artificial surfaces with biological materials, biofunctionalisation, nanodevices, identification techniques and cell-biological manipulation possibilities.