Promoting Research
Excellence through competition, research that benefits science and society equally, plus strong strategic partnerships. These are the key resources with which the Helmholtz Association aims to achieve the goals of the Pact for Research and Innovation. At the same time, we are additionally intensifying our support for young researchers, are opening up career paths in the Helmholtz Association. Building on the reliable planning basis provided by the Pact’s guaranteed funding for the period up to 2010, the Helmholtz Association launched a number of measures that aim to implement this concept with particular quality. On the one hand, the measures will be put into practice with the core budget provided by the system of programme-oriented funding. On the other, they will also include new schemes financed by a further funding instrument: The Initiative and Networking Fund.
Assuring quality, instilling impetus
In many ways, the Initiative and Networking Fund complements the grant procedures established in the programme-oriented funding system. This applies both in respect of term and topic. Firstly, the Fund opens the way for responding immediately and flexibly and for providing impulses wherever strategic research goals need to be met quickly. Secondly, structural innovations, like closer networking with partner institutions at home and abroad, can be specifically supported by the Initiative and Networking Fund to drive developments forward. Indeed, the Pact for Research and Innovation has made it possible to strengthen the Fund by increasing the available budget to 58.5m euros in 2009 and then to 60m euros in 2010. A key instrument within the fund is the Helmholtz Alliances funding line, which has set itself a double objective, namely to achieve strategic goals and to encourage structural innovations. Up to 10m euros per Alliance and year are available, half funded by the Initiative Fund and half by the partner consortium.
Excellence through competition
Essentially, the Pact for Research and Innovation aims to assure outstanding quality in research. The Helmholtz Association turns this objective into reality by awarding funds almost exclusively through competition. This competitive principle applies both to the core budget of the Helmholtz Centres provided via the programme- oriented funding system and to the grants awarded by the Initiative and Networking Fund. Project quality is assured through peer review. In 2006 alone, the Calls for Proposals issued under the Initiative and Networking Fund involved more than 200 largely international, honorary experts serving on the review panels as referees for the Helmholtz Association.
To Initiative and Networking Fund
