With this research-focused newsletter, we want to thank you all – our academic, technical and administrative colleagues – for your great efforts and excellent cooperation in 2021! We have successfully executed our assignments and missions, within the entire breadth of our organization. In a difficult time, we have researched, written articles and applications, supervised candidates, held dissertations and educated students. We have communicated and contributed to the public debate. We have hired new employees, established a new and very challenging economic IT-system, and operated our organization in an excellent way. As leaders of the Faculty, we are very proud of everything we achieve together. Thank you all for your commitment and perseverance in a very demanding time!
The Faculty's Focus on Sustainable Development Research
This autumn, the Faculty launched a strategic initiative towards sustainability-relevant research projects. With the support of Department Heads and the Faculty Board, half of the Faculty's vacant research positions (KD positions) were allocated to this initiative. This amounts to 23 positions for PhD and postdoctoral positions. Each research project could apply from one to four PhD and postdoctoral positions, and the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences wanted a relatively even distribution of larger and smaller projects. In addition, the Faculty decided to contribute operating funds of up to 150 KNOK per fellow per year to experimental and/or field-based research projects. There were no guidelines to which sustainable development goals the applications had to be related to other than that they had to be a natural part of the Faculty's activities.
By the application deadline, we had received 75 applications for a total of 132 research positions. The list consist of a large number of high quality applications, including finalists of Norwegian Centres of Excellence (SFF), European Research Council (ERC) and Interdisciplinary Researcher Project (Fellesløftet), as well as applicants with top grades on their Ground-breaking Research applications, also known as FRIPRO grants.
With the help of input from internal peers from the various research areas at the Faculty and through our own assessments, we have selected 11 projects that will receive support from 2022. The main criteria for the selection has been scientific quality, both related to the research project and its project applicant. The Faculty also wanted to fund research projects that are truly relevant to sustainable development in the sense that, if they succeed, they will produce knowledge that will be important contributions to societal sustainable developments. In addition, we wanted to contribute to supporting projects that arise to be a promising start to larger coordinated collaborative projects, often led by younger researchers.
There are many ways to evaluate such research applications. This year there was no time for external evaluation. We will have more time next year, and will be able to adjust the evaluation accordingly. However, we are confident that the ones we have selected are excellent research projects and we are excited to see their research findings.
Through this process, we have now gained a good overview of sustainability-relevant research at our Faculty and have identified several very promising projects that we did not have the resources to support this round. During the next semester, we are hoping to organize a sustainable development seminar where both those who have received and those who have not received KD positions can meet to discuss relevant research topics and strategies, including the Faculty's role in the University of Oslo's comprehensive climate and environmental strategy and in the plans around Oslo Science City. In autumn 2022, the sustainable development initiative will have new allocation of KD positions, this is a new possibility to apply for funding. We expect that several of this year’s applications who almost made it to the top will have good chances to receive funding next year.
Congratulations to our researchers who have been granted KD positions for sustainable development research projects in 2022:
- Anthropogenic effects on forest biodiversity and ecosystem processes. Håvard Kauserud et al. (IBV/NHM)
- BEE-DIVERSE: Averting an Insect Apocalypse by integrating functional eclogy with genome-wide biodiversity estimates. Baastian Star et al. (IBV/NINA)
- CO2Basalt: Flow and mineral sequestration of carbon dioxide in basalts offshore Norway. Francois Renard et al. (Njord/Geo/FI)
- Coastal Ecosystem Dynamics under anthropogenic pressures. Alexander Eiler et al. (IBV/Met/IFI)
- Computational modelling and machine learning for applications in hydropower. Kent-Andre Mardal et al. (MI/NTNU/Shyft/Statkraft)
- Klimabarometer for Oslofjorden. Einar Broch Johnsen et al. (IFI/MI)
- Kritisk tenkning og bærekraftig utvikling i undervisningen. Eldri Scheie et al. (NFS/Oxford)
- Regulation of lipid droplet dynamics - a new approach in the combat against Alzheimer’s disease. Cecilie Morland et al. (FAI/MED)
- Understanding climate transitions and limits to sustainability in the Arctic (ACT-Pilot). Trude Storelvmo et al. (Geo)
- Photo-, electro-, and thermocatalytic conversion of CO2 into building blocks for sustainable chemicals (PET CAT). Stian Svelle et al. (SMN/KI)
- Sustainable renewable energy systems and climaterisk (TIRELESS). David Ruiz Banos, Marianne Zeyringer et al. (ITS/MI/Geo)
The INFRASTRUCTURE Program
In 2020, the University of Oslo (UiO) submitted 52 applications, being project owner of 21 of them, to the Research Council of Norway's INFRASTRUCTURE program with an announced budget of 1.4 billion NOK. After an initial evaluation of an expert panel, screening and further evaluation of an administration panel with a final decision by the Research Council's Board, the results are now available (only in Norwegian). The Research Council of Norway now invites UiO to negotiations of a total of 14 research infrastructures where UiO is the project owner of four and partner in 10. With this grant, UiO, NTNU and SINTEF are the largest project owners with four grants each. UiO participates in most grants with a total of 14 infrastructures. In addition, UiO is the project coordinator for one infrastructure on the reserve list and a partner in four. Of the Faculty's eight top-priority infrastructures, we were allocated half, and we are very satisfied with that. Congratulations to all of you who have succeeded with these important applications!
The Faculty received the following grants in the areas of mathematics, natural sciences and technology:
- NorLHC II (Enabling LHC Physics at Extreme Collision Rates II). Department of Physics is the project owner.
- NORTEM II (The Norwegian Center for Transmission Electron Microscopy). Department of Physics/Centre for Materials Science and Nanotechnology is partner.
- NABLA (Norwegian Advanced Battery Laboratory). Department of Chemistry/ Centre for Materials Science and Nanotechnology is partner.
- NorFab IIIB (Norwegian Micro- and Nanofabrication Facility III B). Department of Physics/Centre for Materials Science and Nanotechnology is partner.
- TONe (Troll Observing Network). Department of Physics is partner.
- PSI (Peace Science Infrastructure). Department of Informatics and Department of Mathematics are partners.
- HUNT (Compence Hub for Neutron Technology). Department of Physics and Department of Chemistry are partners.
- NAIC (Norwegian AI Cloud). USIT is project owner, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences is partner.
- E-INFRA 2020 (A National eInfrastructure for Science). UNINETT-Sigma2 is project owner in collaboration with the University of Bergen, the University of Tromsø, NTNU and the University of Oslo and the Research Council of Norway.
The following research environments at our Faculty received grants within life science:
- ELIXIR III (Strengthening the Norwegian Node of ELIXIR). Department of Informatics/Centre for Bioinformatics is partner.
- NNP II (Norwegian NMR Platform II). Department of Chemistry is partner.
- NALMIN II (Norwegian Advanced Light Microscopy Imaging Network Phase II). Department of Biosciences is partner.
The Faculty also has infrastructures on the Research Council of Norway’s reserve list, with the possibility of negotiations:
- INES II (Infrastructure for Norwegian Earth System modelling phase II). Department of Geosciences is partner.
- PheNo (Norwegian Plant Phenotyping Platform). Department of Biosciences is partner.
- NORGEO (Norwegian Geohazards research facility for climate change adaption). Department of Geosciences is partner.
At the beginning of next year, the Faculty will participate in negotiations with the Research Council of Norway on the individual infrastructures – we are looking forward to these exciting processes!
Convergence Environment III Led By UiO: Life Sciences
UiO:Life Sciences recently awarded six new convergence environments, which is the third round of this initiative. The purpose is to establish interdisciplinary research groups that enables research collaboration aimed at major societal challenges within health and environment.
Our Faculty's researchers participate as principal investigators in five of the new research environments, and lead one of them. It is a pleasure to congratulate:
- Real world – artificial worlds: Improving causal inference in perinatal pharmaco-epidemiology using machine learning approaches on real-world and artificial data (UIO:RealArt). This research environment, led by Department of Pharmacy, will use machine learning on health data and simulated data to understand the causal relationship between the use of medicine during pregnancy and child development.
- AUTORHYTHM – the role of autophagy in healthy aging – will study the cells' recycling system in time and space to improve human health and life cycle.
- Societal and environmental determinants of brain and cognition (AHeadForLife) aims to uncover how social factors and genes affect the brain and cognitive function throughout life.
- Integrated technologies for tracking organoid morphogenesis (ITOM) will use advanced image technology and data analysis to further develop "mini-organs" from stem cells.
- Novel personalized management strategies for fibrosing diseases (FibroPET) aims at improving the course of the disease and the outcome of treatment for patients with connective tissue-forming diseases.
Interdisciplinary Researcher Project (Fellesløftet) for large, Interdisciplinary Projects
It is very gratifying that the financing of Fellesløftet is confirmed! We are still waiting for the Research Council's final allocation to the individual research environments, and the applicants have been informed about how we have prioritized internally at UiO.