NordForsk welcomes the recent statement on gender equality in academia made by the Young Academies of Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Estonia and Lithuania. The purpose of the joint statement is to identify initiatives and strategies that may improve gender equality in academia.
Open Science and Open Access have become buzzwords we are hearing often these days. Fittingly, the value of Nordic and international cooperation in this field was discussed at the major NeIC 2019 conference Nordic Infrastructure for Open Science, held recently in Copenhagen. In connection with the conference, one of the pioneers of Nordic cooperation stated in an interview with NordForsk that Open Science makes the world a fairer place, where it is no longer just the wealthy who benefit from research.
NordForsk, Academy of Finland, Forte, Research Council of Norway, Innovation Fund Denmark, the Estonian Research Council, Ministry of Education and Science of Latvia and UK Economic and Social Research Council, are collaborating to fund research in the field of digitalisation of the Public Sector. Up to ten research projects with a budget of maximum EURO 1 million each will be funded. Tentatively, a call for proposals will be issued in the autumn of 2019.
NordForsk is issuing a call for proposals for Nordic Research Infrastructure Hubs. The call has a budget of NOK 17 million and the deadline for the call for proposals is 22 October 2019.
NordForsk’s new initiative will promote high-quality interdisciplinary research that combines and integrate skills from multiple disciplines. The first call for proposals under the Nordic Initiative for Interdisciplinary Research has a budget of NOK 120 million and the deadline for submissions is 13 November 2019.
The Nordic countries have cooperated closely on societal security for several decades. In recent years, this tradition has been supplemented by several political initiatives across national borders. In 2016, it was allocated funding to four projects under the Nordic Societal Security Initiative’s call for proposals on society, integrity and cyber-security. Recently, they met in The Hague to exchange experiences and lessons learned so far.
Major advancements in many fields now make it possible to personalise medical treatment. Still, there are too few products facilitating this in practice, particularly when it comes to treatment that patients themselves carry out at home. The Nordic POP project is looking to change this. “Our goal is to develop pharmaceutical products and technological solutions of the future, where personalised medical treatment is the common link,” says Professor Ingunn Tho of the Nordic POP project and the University of Oslo School of Pharmacy.
The Nordic Committee on Bioethics recently organised the conference Bioethics of clinical innovation and unproven methods in collaboration with Centre for Legal Studies in Welfare and Market at the University of Copenhagen. How are clinical innovations and unproven methods developed and introduced in western Nordic health-care systems? What is the legal and regulatory environment concerning unproven methods in medicine? What ethical principles should guide work on emerging treatments and experimentation in hospitals? These three questions were addressed in separate sessions in a day of fruitful discussions.
The number of cancer survivors among children and young people in the Nordic region has never been greater, but little is known about the challenges this patient group faces in the aftermath of cancer treatment. Survivors of childhood cancer may experience difficulty concentrating, fatigue or depression due to various late effects from the disease and the treatment, and also have an increased risk for a wide array of other diseases. More knowledge is needed about the impacts of childhood cancer on subsequent education, working life and family life. With the help of Nordic health registries, the NordForsk-funded SALiCCS project is taking steps to learn more.
