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The Finnish Cultural Foundation’s October round of grant applications is now open

In 2020, the Cultural Foundation will award a total of 44 million euros in grants, of which 24 million euros in the Central Fund October round of applications and 1.2 million in the March and August rounds. A further 2 million will be awarded through pools and 4 million earmarked for other special targets. The regional funds will award 13 million euros in the January round of applications.

– All Finnish nationals, people and organisations residing or operating in Finland are eligible to apply. Clear, strong ties to Finland or Finnish culture demonstrate adequate grounds for applying, as well, encourages Director Juhana Lassila from the Finnish Cultural Foundation.

The full-year grant sum has been increased to 26 000 euros in both science and arts, while the post doc -grant stands at 30 000 euros. For the first time the application round includes four- and two-year grants in addition to earlier working grants.

Both grant flexibility and its range of uses are being expanded. For example, unlike earlier, a grant can now be awarded for a scientific or artistic project to be carried out in addition to full-time gainful employment, provided the project is not related to the full-time employment. The scale of the project is not specified, but a single so-called passion grant is limited to 3 000 euros.

The science grants are aimed particularly at doctoral dissertation work and post doc scientific research. For PhD students, the Finnish Cultural Foundation offers an opportunity to combine a grant with 50-56% gainful employment with a university or other research institute so that these together enable full-time post-graduate studies. During the application process, there need not be a standing contract with the university; the grant may be applied for full-time work and then retrospectively changed to part-time, which doubles the duration of the grant.

Special targets and large-scale projects in Arts

Artists are eligible to apply for grants for work and projects, and, in addition, organisations can apply for grants to carry out cultural projects. The October round of applications features the Eminentia and Art for Institutions grants. The Eminentia grants are intended for reflection on experiences gained in the course of one’s career, for sharing one’s life’s work in popular form, or for work showing initiative in increasing the social significance of culture. The purpose of Art for Institutions grants is to promote cultural equality and improve the quality of life of people in need of special care or treatment through arts.

– In arts, we also encourage grant applications for larger-scale, multi-year projects. The Cultural Foundation does not determine actual emphases for large-scale projects but hopes for high-quality projects in all fields of art as well as between different fields, reminds Jari Sokka, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Finnish Cultural Foundation.

The Central Fund of the Cultural Foundation’s October round of applications will be open between October 1 and 31 2019. An application can be submitted here. The Online Application Service closes on the deadline date at 4 pm Finnish time (Eastern European Time). References connected with applications must also be submitted before this deadline.

Additional funding for research focusing on future energy markets or the technological revolution

The October round of applications includes ca. one million euro additional funding for research concentrating on future energy markets and/or the technological revolution. This additional funding will support between one and five research projects. The funding will be awarded for a maximum of three years and can be used for doctoral dissertation students and post doc researchers’ working grants and other expenses arising from the research. You can find more information here.

Sign up for the Ask and Apply Info Session

Applicants are welcome to an Ask and Apply Info Session, where help is available for drafting applications and any possible questions can be answered. These sessions are held in the Seminar Room of the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma on Tuesday October 22 and Wednesday October 23 at 2-4 pm. Registration is mandatory for either session and 30 places are available on a first come, first served basis. Applicants should bring their own laptops or tablets. Registrations are binding and can be found at skr.fi/klinikat.

You can find detailed guidelines on how to apply and further information here.

Screening for Drugs that Have Adverse Interaction Effects

Proviisori ja kliinisen farmakologian väitöskirjatutkija Helinä Kahma. Kuva: Anna Bui

A pharmacist and a doctorand Helinä Kahma.

When a person takes medicine, it stays in the body for a while having an effect, until it is eliminated. From the body’s point of view, medicine is a foreign substance that must be expelled.

Medicines, i.e. drugs, are often eliminated from the body using CYP enzymes, which are mostly produced in the liver. The CYP enzymes break down the drug into a water-soluble form, which makes it easy to excrete in urine.

When drugs are “antagonistic”, i.e. their combined effect is adverse, it is often due to the fact that one of the drugs acts as an “inhibitor”, competing for the same CYP enzyme with another drug, the “victim drug”. In such cases, the victim drug cannot be excreted normally from the organism and when the drug is taken, its concentration can rise uncontrollably and unpredictably.

When the inhibitor is removed from the organism, the CYP enzymes are usually immediately freed up and start to work on the excretion of the victim drug, according to normal procedure.

There has been a lot of research on drug interactions, and these days drug manufacturers make it known if a product is a CYP inhibitor and must be used with caution in combination with other drugs. Certain pharmaceutical products with particularly dangerous interactive effects have also been removed from the market altogether.

– Some drugs destroy CYP enzymes entirely. This means that the victim drug cannot be eliminated until the liver has had time to produce enough new enzyme. That may take a long time, explains Helinä Kahma, Pharmacist and PhD candidate in Clinical Pharmacology.

This is known as mechanism-based inhibition (MBI). It is a less common, more troublesome CYP interaction, which has been researched less than more common forms of CYP inhibition.

In her PhD work, Kahma is developing a method for easily screening drugs causing MBI.

– These days pharmaceutical developers do take MBI into account, but there are still many drugs on the market that have not been thoroughly examined from this perspective.

Kahma is conducting her research at Biomedicum 1 in Meilahti, Helsinki. There she has access to a drug-screening robot. It can quickly process microplates, which are plates consisting of various “wells” in which various substances can be examined.

The wells are filled with a cocktail of “goo” isolated from the liver and victim drugs requiring diverse CYP enzymes. Then different drugs are added to each well to find out whether it affects the interaction between the victim drug and the CYP enzyme. If it does, it may be a potential inhibitor.

The biggest challenge in the project has been fine-tuning various details of the robotic process.

“A robot is not always as swift to adapt to timed pipetting series as human hands.”

Another challenge is the consistency of biological samples. 

–The solution at the bottom of the wells needs to be stirred occasionally. With water-based solutions this is not usually a problem, but stirring makes the liver isolate foamy, Kahma explains.

Kahma is screening dozens of drugs using microplates as part of her PhD project, but the plan is to extend the research to hundreds of new drugs afterwards.

During her PhD project, Kahma intends to make the process as efficient as possible. This is why enough time must be spent on solving issues like the foaming.

If and when potential inhibitors are found, the findings will be verified using clinical trials on healthy volunteers.

– Results obtained using microplates won’t tell us if the findings are clinically significant.

Kahma (*1985) went on from school to study Pharmacy at the University of Helsinki, because she was interested in science and medicine but did not want to become a doctor. Her diploma work in Pharmacy was related to drug interactions, and she also completed her Master’s thesis on the subject for the pharmaceutical company Orion. That was when she heard about the Department of Clinical Pharmacology in Meilahti and applied to carry out PhD research on MBIs there in 2015.

She is getting towards the end of her research, but she is likely to continue working in Meilahti on drug interactions and the microplate robot after that.

Text: Antti Kivimäki
Pics: Anna Bui

Helinä Kahma received a EUR 24 000 in 2019 for her doctoral thesis about drugs that have adverse effects when used together following a less common and lesser-known mechanism.

Cultural Foundation survey finds that doctoral studies are useful even outside of an academic career

The Finnish Cultural Foundation (SKR) began an enquiry into the perceived impact of its thesis funding in late 2018. Between 2005 and 2007, the Cultural Foundation gave out a total of EUR 24.5 million in doctoral thesis grants. The enquiry was carried out as a survey of the individuals who had applied for a doctoral thesis grant from the Foundation’s Central Fund in the aforementioned period.

The online survey was sent to 3,570 grant applicants, of whom 961 responded. Of the respondents, 251 had never received a grant from SKR. The survey was conducted by Optifluence Oy, with Petro Poutanen, Doctor of Social Sciences, as the head researcher. The results of the survey apply to the survey’s respondents and are not generalizable to the whole of Finland.

Doctoral studies are perceived as useful

Of the recipients of an SKR grant between 2005 and 2007, 69% said that their career progress was in line with their objectives, regardless of whether the thesis they were working on at the time of the grant had been completed or not. The corresponding figure for the respondents who had never received an SKR grant was 53%.

“Doctoral education provides skills in acquiring and refining information at such a high level that it is useful in practically any expert position.” – Respondent with doctoral degree

Of all the respondents to the survey, 18% had not completed their doctoral degrees. For male respondents the most typical reason for non-completion of their thesis was that they had obtained a more interesting job (33% of male respondents), whereas this was the reason for 21% of female respondents. Meanwhile, a significant proportion of women (22%) said that they were still working on their thesis (compared to 12% of men). The reason for non-completion of the thesis for 8% of these respondents was that their funding had run out.

According to the survey, applicants for thesis grants from SKR most typically end up holding research positions. Out of those who had received grants in 2005–2007, 69% were working as researchers, compared to 51% of those who had received no grants at all from SKR. Around one third of those who were working as researchers said that they were post-doc researchers, while another third had the seniority as researchers of adjunct professor or higher. The category of “other research tasks” applied to a few more women (16%) than men (10%), whereas more of the men (12% versus 6% of women) had achieved the level of professor.

According to the survey, even those who had not ended up in academia found their doctoral studies and thesis to have been useful. Especially those employed in project and administrative work found their doctoral studies to be significant in terms of their career, even if they had not completed their theses. The respondents considered the impact of their doctoral studies to lie especially in developing their competence and opening new job opportunities, as well as more generally in producing new scientific knowledge and know-how.

“I have obtained interesting job positions that support my research on the side [of my doctoral studies]. In this way I have been able to put my competence to use in the society.” – Respondent without doctoral degree

Perceived impact of doctoral thesis research. Scale: 1–5 (1=strongly disagree, 5=strongly agree). The figures are averages.

Perceived impact of doctoral thesis research. Scale: 1–5 (1=strongly disagree, 5=strongly agree). The figures are averages.

Completing a thesis improves income levels

Most of those who were not working as researchers were senior clerical personnel or managers. Of those working outside of research, 21% of men and 13% of women held management positions. More women (33%) than men (23%) worked for municipalities or local and regional authorities, while most men (39%) worked in private enterprises, compared to significantly fewer women (17%).

“The differences between employers is most likely due to the strong gender bias in the various academic fields of the respondents,” explains Olli Vallinheimo from the Finnish Cultural Foundation.

Completion of the doctoral thesis correlated to an improvement in the respondents’ income level. Based on the responses, the impact on income level was greater among women than men. Of those with a doctoral degree, 74% of men and 63% of women had gross incomes of EUR 3,500 per month or higher. The corresponding proportions for those without doctoral degrees were 59% of men and 40% of women. One third of men and one fifth of women with a doctoral degree reached the EUR 5,000+ income bracket.

There were also significant differences between academic fields. In the humanities, only one in ten respondents with thesis studies made over EUR 5,000 per month, compared to one in three for science and medicine.

Income distribution (%) across the four income brackets (gross income) for female and male respondents with and without doctoral degrees.

Income distribution (%) across the 4 income brackets (gross) for female and male respondents with and without doctoral degrees.

Thesis funding is fragmented

The funding for the doctoral studies of the respondents had almost invariably come from diverse sources. The responses indicate that most doctoral students would wish for a longer-term, more permanent funding model, preferably based on a salary and an employment contract, in which the thesis researcher could remain close to or a part of the academic community. However, most respondents agreed that a grant from the Finnish Cultural Foundation represented a significant merit for a researcher.

“I feel that working in academia is still better done on the university’s payroll, in terms of both integration into the university and the researcher’s working conditions. […] For my part, the funding from SKR allowed for research periods without being tied to administrative duties.” – Respondent

“This survey confirms previous impressions of the fragmentary nature of thesis funding, and for its part it backs the Cultural Foundation’s decision to focus on grants with a longer duration in the future,” says SKR’s Secretary General Antti Arjava.

The reference group for the responses consists of persons who worked on their theses in projects funded by the Academy of Finland, with an employment contract lasting six months or longer, in the same period of time. There were only slight differences in the standards of the publications made by the researchers financed by the Cultural Foundation and the Academy.

Using a comparative method to examine the impact of the researchers’ publications on a field-specific basis, no significant differences could be found between the publications of the researchers financed by the Cultural Foundation and the Academy. However, based on the comparative data and measured by the number or publications and the number of references, SKR can be said to have funded more successful researchers than the Academy in medicine, technology and natural science, while the opposite is true in the fields of social science, education and humanities.

The full research report is available on request from Olli Vallinheimo, coordinator.

From Natural Gas to Renewable Energy Sources

The sun shines when it shines, and the wind blows when it blows. Natural gas, on the other hand, can be turned into electricity at any time: all you have to do is to switch on the gas turbines.

As the world strives for eco-friendliness, one aim is to increasingly replace natural gas with renewable energy. This is an admirable intention, but what does it actually mean technically and judicially?

”Muuttuvilla energiamarkkinoilla eri toimijat pystyvät tekemään rationaalisia päätöksiä, kunhan niillä on selkeä ymmärrys hinnoista ja hyödyistä”, Tulanen yliopistossa vieraileva oikeustieteen tutkija Tade Oyewumni sanoo.

law researcher Tade Oyewunmi is a visiting scholar at Tulane University.

– The increase in renewables is diversifying the system, which means that fewer customers can completely trust the electrical network, explains Tade Oyewunmi, a legal researcher at the University of Eastern Finland.

– Expensive batteries and other energy storage systems, as well as increasingly accurate measurement devices are required in order for a financially viable balance to be found between supply and demand.

Oyewunmi is now on his second year as a visiting researcher at Tulane University in New Orleans, USA. His project looks at the benefits and costs of increasing the proportion of renewables in energy production using public funding, at the expense of natural gas.

New Orleans is an excellent location for this research. The state of Louisiana is the United States’ fifth-largest natural gas producer, and the shore of the Gulf of Mexico is home to important terminals that supply liquefied natural gas (LNG) to other areas, particularly Europe and Asia.

– USA is the world’s leading natural gas producer. Since 2017 it has been a net exporter of gas thanks to the shale gas business and an increase in demand.

There is high demand for gas because it is the least polluting fossil fuel, and also simply because total energy demand is growing around the world. At the same time there is high political pressure to switch to renewables.

Oyewunmi intends to create a kind of highly complex “road map” of the legal aspects that operators in the sector should keep in mind amid these changes. 

– I don’t mean to question the replacement of gas with renewables in itself, but to figure out how it can be done. The various operators in the changing energy market can only make rational decisions if they have a clear understanding of the pros and cons.

Oyewunmi was born in Nigeria and obtained a Bachelor of Laws degree there. After completing a Master’s degree in Scotland, he defended his doctoral thesis at the University of Eastern Finland in 2017. His entire career thus far has focused on energy law, and he would be happy to stick to the subject for the rest of his life.

He is accompanied in New Orleans by his wife and two children. The grant he received also covers some of the costs of childcare, schooling and family insurance.

Tade Oyewunmi, LLD, received a 70,000 euro grant from the Finnish Cultural Foundation’s post doc pool for his post-doctoral research on the role of law and institutions in the changing energy market, which he is carrying out in the United States. Applications for the post doc pool are accepted twice a year, in autumn and spring.

Text: Antti Kivimäki
Pic: Tade Oyewunmi and Tulane University

Finnish Cultural Foundation’s residency programme expands to South America

Four new residencies around the world

In 2020 the programme will expand to a new continent: South America. New residencies will open in Buenos Aires (for writers, in collaboration with Fundación Filba) and in Rio de Janeiro (for visual artists and curators, at the Capacete residency). Two three-month working grants will be awarded for each of these residencies.

A new place for visual artists and curators will open at the AIT (Arts Initiative Tokyo) residency in Tokyo. Similarly, a new venue for working groups in the fields of dance, performing arts and theatre will become available in Santarcangelo di Romagna in Italy.

In addition to these, the former residencies in SeMA Nanji (Seoul), Tokyo Arts and Space Residency (Tokyo), Artspace (Sydney), Institute for Provocation (Beijing) and Triangle (New York) will also be available. 

The Cultural Foundation wants to observe the environmental impact of its growing residency programme

“Working in residencies facilitates international interaction and collaboration between artists, so travel for this purpose is still justified – often even essential – for artists working in the global field. However, we want to encourage our grantees to choose more environmentally friendly travel options whenever possible,” explains Senior Advisor Johanna Ruohonen.

Artists who are granted a place in residencies that can be reached by rail or sea will receive additional travel funding if they commit to refraining from flying to the destination. In this case, the grant for Asian residencies will be EUR 5,000, which helps to make up for the higher ticket price and for the use of potential work time for travelling (two weeks in each direction). The travel grant for those going to Italy by rail will be EUR 1,500 per person, which covers an estimated one week’s worth of working hours.

“Work done on board the train could also optimally enhance the residency experience and deepen the benefits obtained from it,” Ruohonen says.

Rail traveling as a part of the residency programme

In February 2019, the Cultural Foundation awarded a grant totalling EUR 70,000 to a project led by Miina Hujala and Arttu Merimaa, which is related to building an eastward travel channel for artists and exploring the possibilities for rail travel in bringing together and upholding the work of artists, for example through residencies.

“Artists’ residencies can act as a platform for opening and forming new connections, as part of which travelling long distances by train or by sea highlights and reinforces the importance of practical action in the use of sustainable forms and channels of transport,” explain Hujala and Merimaa.

Those travelling to the Cultural Foundation’s Asian residencies can receive not only concrete advice for making travel arrangements, but also opportunities for travelling together with others heading in the same direction, from the Hujala-Merimaa project. The Helsinki International Artist Programme (HIAP) is one of the project’s partners and also an advisor for the Cultural Foundation’s residency programme.

The working grant for the Cultural Foundation’s residencies is EUR 7,000 per three-month period, or EUR 650 per person per week for working groups in Santarcangelo. Further information on each residency and the applicable grants can be found on the Cultural Foundation’s website.

The August application round will be open between 12 and 30 August 2019. The application period will close at 4 pm Finnish time on the final application day.

An information session on the residencies will be held on Wednesday 14 August from 4 pm in the Seminar Room of the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma (Mannerheiminaukio 2, Helsinki). Language of the event is English.

The event will be live-streamed and can be followed at the time or later on the Cultural Foundation’s YouTube channel and Facebook page.

Extra 1 million euros open for applications to the future energy market or the technology revolution

“In 2017 the Cultural Foundation established the practice of encouraging larger-than-usual grant applications related to a specific field each year. The additional funding has until now pertained to the fields of agriculture and medicine,” explains Jari Sokka, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Finnish Cultural Foundation.

“In research related to technical sciences and economics it is beneficial if the research team comprises a diverse group of people from the worlds of academia, research institutions and business. Traditionally, Finland has been strong in collaborations between universities and business, but now special support is needed to ensure that different perspectives will meet and knowledge transfers can take place,” Sokka says.

The additional grant funding, totalling up to EUR 1 million, will be awarded to between one and five research projects. Applications may be made in the name of teams of several researchers, but not entire universities or research institutions. A research proposal in Finnish or English may be appended to the application, but the abstract on the application form must be in Finnish.

The Cultural Foundation’s October round of applications will be open between 1 and 31 October 2019. All in all, there will be approximately EUR 25 million in grants open for application.

For further information go to skr.fi/million2020

Mobility grants totalling EUR 150,000 awarded to 36 applicants

The purpose of the Cultural Foundation’s mobility grant is to enable artists or teams to spend time abroad to discover new tools and networks that support their artistic practice. Applicants must spend a minimum of two weeks at the destination to qualify for the grant. Grants may be sought for expenses ranging from EUR 3,000 to 10,000, and acceptable uses of the grant include residency costs, festival participations, exhibition projects and travel related to international collaborations.

“As part of our March round of applications, we received 199 mobility grant applications, covering almost all fields of art. We have been pleased to witness the demand for this grant, which was first launched in August 2017. The standard of applications has remained high throughout,” says Senior Advisor Johanna Ruohonen from the Cultural Foundation.

In this round, only one EUR 10,000 grant was awarded, and it went to the joint production of the Helsinki-based theatre company Klockriketeatern and the American choir The Crossing, entitled Aniara – fragments of time and space, for its première in Philadelphia and a week-long festival appearance in the Netherlands. In September, Aniara will be shown in the Almi Hall of the Finnish National Opera.

The theatre group Jalostamo2, led by actor-playwright Anna Lipponen and production and lighting designer Petri Tuhkanen, received EUR 8,000 for a residency in Svalbard in July 2019. The working group is creating an episodic story and play entitled Ice Ice Baby, which concerns the Earth’s climate crisis and its effects on humans and wildlife. The work will premiere in Helsinki as part of Viirus theatre’s GUEST programme in November 2019. 

Thanks to the active efforts of the International Romani Writers’ Association, founded in 2002 by Cultural Counsellor Veijo Baltzar, the first-ever Roma Pavilion will take place at Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2019. A mobility grant of EUR 3,500 will help cover related organisation and travel costs.

“Typically the projects or artists who receive our mobility grants have already arranged the funding they need for the work itself, but they still need to cover the costs of transporting artworks, acquiring event technology or travel for large groups of team members, among other things,” Ruohonen explains.

Applications for the Cultural Foundation’s mobility grants are accepted twice a year, in March and August.

For further information, please contact:

Stop shouting! New foundation to promote constructive societal discussion

Constructive societal discussion is a fundamental requirement for democracy and a functioning society, but it has proved difficult to come by in recent years. Therefore, four major societal funders have established a new foundation aimed at moving the discussion culture in Finland in a more constructive direction, reducing the entrenchment of society and increasing people’s participation in society together with other parties interested in dialogue.

“We are concerned about the polarisation of society and the tensions increasing within it. The ability and will to engage in constructive discussion are increasingly important so that we can understand each other in spite of our different backgrounds,”  says Antti Arjava, Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of the Timeout Foundation.

Underlying the foundation is the work carried out by Sitra between 2016 and –2019 to develop and disseminate the Timeout operating model. Timeout emerged from observing that societal discussion had become overheated, the democratic system was in need of reform and there was a growing need for dialogue in a complex world. Timeout is a way of engaging in constructive societal discussion so that people from different backgrounds can be equally involved and those who are often left out of discussions are included.

The new foundation will continue and further develop Sitra’s work and unite organisations already engaged in dialogue in Finland so that expertise in dialogue spreads as far as possible.

– It has been great to see how much demand for Timeout there has been in Finland; already, more than 100 organisations have adopted Timeout, and more than 6,500 people around Finland have taken part in Timeout discussions, says Janne Kareinen, who was head of the Timeout work at Sitra.

– With the new foundation, completely new kinds of opportunities will emerge, and the Timeout work will only become stronger.

Laura Arikka, Erätauko-säätiön toimitusjohtaja

Laura Arikka, the Executive Director of the Timeout Foundation

Laura Arikka will begin in the position of the foundation’s Executive Director on 1 June 2019. Arikka has previously worked as an expert in human rights and co–operation with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland. She was a member of the Timeout developer team and has continued as a Timeout mentor.

– It is great to be involved in leading Timeout forward! I have seen several times how the method works, and seen that discussion is worthwhile. Joint encounters have touched people who are very different from one another. Finland’s social peace will strengthen through dialogue, says Laura Arikka.

Why did the founding members get involved in establishing the Timeout Foundation?

Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation

“One of the purposes of the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation is to accelerate discussion on current societal topics. By getting involved in establishing the Timeout Foundation, we are assuming a broader point of view and building the foundation for the realisation of the objective – without dialogue skills, after all, there is no discussion or the discussion is not constructive.” (Arto Mäenmaa, Executive Director of the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation.)

Sitra

“Sitra is extremely delighted that the leading foundations in Finland are jointly supporting the continuation of the work that got off to a fine start with the Timeout project. Constructive societal discussion has an impact on the democracy, trust and resilience of our society.” (Paula Laine, Director for Foresight, Insight and Strategy at Sitra.)

Finnish Cultural Foundation

“For the Finnish Cultural Foundation, national unity and joint responsibility are values that we want to support. Unity does not mean unanimity; on the contrary, it means the ability to accept differences in opinion and solve them constructively, looking for compromises. It is essential to create events in which people can talk face –to –face and understand the factors underlying their differences of opinion. That is what Timeout aims at. In these events, the aim is not to find immediate solutions to problems, but to create an atmosphere in which it is generally easier to conciliate different points of view. Such an objective is excellently suited to the Finnish Cultural Foundation, representing its hundreds of thousands of donors and avoiding taking a stand on political questions.” (Antti Arjava, Secretary General of the Finnish Cultural Foundation.)

Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland

“One of the most important goals of the Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland is to boldly contribute to creating an open and inclusive society in which everyone has the right to be a Finn. We believe that with the help of Timeout, Finland on the whole is taking a step in the right direction. The concept has impressed us, and we are satisfied with being able to contribute to disseminating it across the entire country – in several languages.” (Sören Lillkung, Executive Director of the Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland and member of the Board of the Timeout Foundation.)

Contact details:

Paula Laine, Chair of the Board of Directors of the Timeout Foundation; Director, Foresight, Insight and Strategy at Sitra
Tel. +358 (0)29 618 487 paula.laine@sitra.fi

PoDoCo Program Grant Application Round Opens 1.3-15.4.2019

PoDoCo is a matchmaking program supporting long term competitiveness and strategic renewal of companies and employment of young doctors in the private sector. PoDoCo matches newly graduated doctors with companies, and financially supports the collaboration projects between doctors and companies.

PoDoCo program offers research grants of 6-12 months to cover the costs of the first part of the project. Grants awarded by PoDoCo foundation pool are intended for academic research investigating new innovative ideas to boost the strategic renewal of Finnish industry. The aim is that after the grant phase the company hires the doctor for same period of time to deepen the research results and to create company-specific insight. A one-year research grant is EUR 28 000.

All companies operating in Finland and all young doctors who have recently completed or will soon complete their doctorate degree are welcome to join the PoDoCo program.

PoDoCo program opens application round for grants from 1st March 2019 to 15th April 2019. Results of the application round will be published at latest on June 2019.

PoDoCo-logot 2019

PoDoCo program has two application rounds each year and awards some 17 postdoctoral grants in each round. Nine foundations will allocate altogether almost 1 000 000 euros to the program during year 2018. The program’s foundations are Finnish Cultural Foundation, Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation, Svenska Kulturfonden, Finnish Foundation for Technology Promotion, Maj and Tor Nessling Foundation, The Foundation for Economic Education, KAUTE Foundation, the Paulo Foundation and Maa- ja Vesitekniikantuki ry. PoDoCo program is operated by DIMECC Ltd.

Further information about the program and the application round is available on PoDoCo website at www.podoco.fi, and from Program Manager Arto Nieminen, arto.nieminen@dimecc.com, +358 40 099 1226