Aalto granted EUR 10.4 million for profiling by Academy of Finland

The Academy of Finland has granted Aalto University 10.4 million euros for strengthening its research profile for the next four years. This form of funding supports universities in strengthening their chosen research fields.

Solutions for the 2030’s

Three spearheads building on research strongholds within Aalto’s key research areas were granted funding: the themes Autonomous systems, Data-driven society, and Powering the future enable important solutions for the 2030’s contributing to digital transformation, the opportunities that growing amounts of data provide for decision-making, and the increasing importance of renewable energy. The themes include close collaboration within the capital area (University of Helsinki and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland), while contributing to strategic profiling nationally (particularly with the Tampere University and LUT University).

With the funding, Aalto University will strengthen research excellence and renewal, foster multidisciplinary research, collaborations and interactions, and speed up the development of the research-based innovation ecosystem. Funding is allocated to research excellence (professors, lecturers, postdoctoral scientists and doctoral students), facilitation of multidisciplinarity (postdoctoral scientists and doctoral students), and societal impact (joint professors with research institutes, positions in residence, postdoctoral scientists and doctoral students joint with companies).

Aalto’s application was ranked 1^st of the thirteen applications by the international peer expert panel.  According to panel: ‘This is a very strong proposal from an increasingly ambitious and successful university. The improvement in Aalto’s research output, ranking position and international visibility is excellent!’

‘It is great that the systematic strategic development of our research is recognized with a substantial amount of funding and I am particularly proud of the excellent work of Aalto community that once again stands out in the assessment by the international peer expert group,’ says President of Aalto University Ilkka Niemelä.

The Academy of Finland granted a total of 50 million euros in funding. The Academy made the funding decisions on the basis of assessments by the international panels. Funding for profiling was now granted for the fifth time. In the first round in 2015 Aalto University was granted 13,6 million, in the second round in 2016 12 million, in the third round in 2017 10.8 million and in the fourth round in March 2018 12 million euros.

Further information:

The Academy of Finland press release 17 May 2019 (aka.fi)