Presidential decision: Karolinska Institutet bolsters EU funding for researchers

“This is a crucial step towards realising the goals laid out in KI’s Strategy 2030 and is consistent with the government’s intention to increase the research funding from the EU’s Horizon Europe programme by 10 per cent,” says KI President Annika Östman Wernerson. “The investment will help to bring long-term stability to research at KI and hopefully make KI more attractive for future researchers. We will be able to increase the number of KI-led projects and create a more conducive environment for groundbreaking research.” 

The funding package is closely related to KI’s strategic goals, which include closer relations with the healthcare sector, one of KI’s most important partners. Through its EU projects, which are often conducted in close partnership with hospitals and clinical professionals, KI contributes to health-promoting advances in the sector. 

The strategy also stresses the importance of taking an international perspective in Swedish research, where project applications often need a European or global focus, and the new funding package supports this.

A three-part package

KI’s funding package consists of three parts, of which co-financing is one. This means that each department will receive additional funding that the head of department can prioritise, linked to the department’s EU projects. The received sum will correspond to ten per cent of each department’s EU project income from previous years.

This money can be used to cover costs that are not covered by the grant, such as for premises and other such indirect costs, and be distributed to researchers involved in EU projects.

“This co-financing part of the package will enable more KI researchers to apply for grants and take the coordinating role or participate in more EU projects,” says Marie Arsenian Henriksson, academic vice president for research at KI. “This will strengthen their competitiveness and allows more time-intensive projects, which in turn will boost KI’s attractiveness and visibility in Europe.” 

A second part of the package is for researchers concluding their ERC projects, who will receive a one-off payment equivalent to one year’s contract value by way of contribution to their continued frontier research, staff costs, and capacity to continue developing their work while applying for new grants.

The third part of the package involves the recruitment of two new project coordinators at KI whose job it will be to facilitate the handling of large research projects from application to implementation. 

“It is anticipated that the funding package will reduce the administrative burden for researchers who lead EU consortia and create a more uniform and efficient way of working within the organisation,” says Sten Linnarsson, dean of KI Solna. “This will free up time and resources, which will allow the researchers to focus on their work.”

Creating an attractive work environment

Research at KI is meant to help solve global societal problems, as Professor Östman Wernerson points out.

“And no organisation can do this on its own,” she continues. “Many different stakeholders and scientific disciplines must work together to make it happen. By focusing on global societal challenges, research with the best proposals for new approaches can obtain the funding needed to tackle them.”