Many good experiences have been gained and a lot of excellent work has been put in to secure the new Centres of Excellence. We will take a look back at the process in this article. Dean of Research Jens Petter Berg and Research Adviser Veslemøy Ramsfjell share their experiences.
Starting the process
The process to establish the two new centres of excellence started three years ago. During the spring of 2019, there was a preliminary call for proposals phase involving management endorsement for the process at the University of Oslo’s Forum of Research Deans. During the autumn of 2019, the Faculty received NOK 250,000 in stimulus funding from the University of Oslo to aid the early start-up of application work. There were initiatives to submit 21 applications for centres of excellence. The Faculty management decided that managers and deputy managers at existing centres of excellence would not receive stimulus funding. The Faculty’s stimulus funding was therefore distributed evenly across the remaining 16 projects, with approximately NOK 15,000 per project. The Faculty initially issued invitations to present ideas for a new centre of excellence to an expert panel in February 2020.
The expert panel followed up on the applicants
The expert panel that was established to support applications with the application design was chaired by Jens Petter Berg, Dean of Research. His team consisted of experts appointed as representatives of each department, as well as an expert from Akershus University Hospital and one from Oslo University Hospital, Jan Bjålie from the Department of Basic Medical Sciences, Harald Stenmark from ClinMed, Ivar Sønbø Kristiansen from the Department of Health and Society, Inger Sandlie from Oslo University Hospital and Helge Rørvik Røsjø from Akershus University Hospital. The expert panel met with the applicants twice before the first stage of the applications were due to be submitted and once before the second and final round when stage two of the application was due to be submitted. There were three finalists from MED.
“I am extremely grateful that such experienced, talented and busy researchers took the time to participate on the expert panel,” says the Dean of Research. “The panel provided direct and highly constructive feedback and it was interesting to see how the applications developed throughout the application period. The response from the applicants was also consistently positive. They felt it was very useful to get a critical outside view in order to further improve their applications,” Berg explains.
Good idea to start early
The most important experience from the process might be the fact that the University of Oslo and MED did the right thing by starting early. “We choose to start early to identify whether there were any similar applications that could be combined through a collaboration, to look at the composition of the management for the centre of excellence and the academic direction and strength,” Jens Petter Berg explains. “Applying to become a Centre of Excellence involves applying for funding to conduct excellent, ground-breaking research,” he adds.
Establishing expert panels to provide feedback on draft applications during the project is something that is done only for the biggest of funding allocations. “But the Faculty also used expert panels for finalists in the K.G. Jebsen Foundation’s calls for proposals,” Berg explains and adds “albeit to a lesser extent than in the CoE call for proposals.” “It largely functioned as a trial interview ahead of the interviews the finalists have with the academic committee.”
Work coordinated by the Faculty
Research Adviser Veslemøy Ramsfjell from the Division for External Research Funding at the Faculty had an important part to play in the process of securing two new Centres of Excellence for MED. The University of Oslo has acted as a link with the Research Council of Norway. And Ramsfjell has been the link between researchers and the University of Oslo.
“The collaboration with Vibeke Alm has been excellent,” Ramsfjell explains and adds “Many administrative questions have come up and I have always received a quick response.”
The aim of organising the information flow in this way was for researchers to be able to focus on their application work and to inform them of internal deadlines and services available at the Faculty and the University of Oslo throughout the process.
Veslemøy Ramsfjell has been a point of contact for researchers if they had any questions relating to the CoE V call for proposals and the process involving the University of Oslo/MED and the Research Council of Norway. Researchers have also had the opportunity to submit their applications for review by a consultant provided by the University of Oslo in multiple instances. Ramsfjell coordinated. “My greatest contribution, however, was to facilitate meetings with the expert panel, at which researchers would first receive feedback on their concept and team and subsequently feedback on the application itself,” she explains.
Ground-breaking research ideas
“A CoE application is very special as it includes both unique, ground-breaking research ideas and the planning for strong collaboration that is crucial to achieve the objectives for a new 10-year Centre of Excellence. Enormous efforts are invested over several years from researchers in order to achieve a high-quality application that meets the criteria set out in the call for proposals,” the Dean of Research explains.
The recipe for success
Competition was fierce and we know that several of the communities with top scores from the University of Oslo were unsuccessful.
“The fact that these two of our applications were chosen is a result of the convincing plans for ambitious, ground-breaking research with great potential to be at the forefront of international research. It is absolutely fantastic that two of the three finalists from MED were successful, even if we would have loved to see all of the three outstanding finalists end up as Centres of Excellence,” Ramsfjell says.
“We could say that there were no big “surprises” among the MED finalists,” Berg adds. “All three of the applicants that reached the final were among our most experienced researchers. I think it is excellent and exciting to see Arne Klungland recruiting Lorena Arranz from the Arctic University of Norway to take over as the Head of the Centre for Embryology and Healthy Development after five years. She represents a new generation of researchers and is familiar with the research communities in the region after her time and affiliation with NCMM.”
“One of the things that characterises the MED finalists is that they hail from outstanding communities with values of transparency and a strong culture of sharing with the aim of helping each other succeed. This is crucial when it comes to developing a new generation of researchers, which is one of the objectives of a Centre of Excellence,” says Veslemøy Ramsfjell.
Some of the application initiatives will undoubtedly come back stronger
Considering all of the work that goes into preparing an application for a Centre of Excellence, we hope that other research projects will emerge from the early application collaborations.
“We hope that the work on the concepts and the collaboration across communities will materialise as other projects over time. Research ideas need time to mature and some of the application initiatives turned out to need more time,” the Dean of Research says.
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Arne Klungland secures a Centre of Excellence: Centre for Embryology and Healthy Development.
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Professor Arnoldo Frigessi to lead new Centre of Excellence (article in Norwegian) in artificial intelligence at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences.