Research Council of Finland grants major funding to research infrastructures

This was the first set of decisions on the FIRI 2023 call for research infrastructure applications.

Tampere University participates in three infrastructure projects that strengthen biobank services, utilise data and technologies in human sciences and meet air quality and climate change challenges.

• Biocenter Finland: Critical Investments in National Life Science Research Infrastructures 
• FIN-CLARIAH – Developing a Common RI for CLARIAH Finland (CLARIAH) 
• Integrated Atmospheric and Earth System Research Infrastructure: Integrated observations for effective climate solutions in terrestrial ecosystems (INAR RI) 

Key technologies in life sciences for research and innovation

Biocenter Finland (BF) is a national research infrastructure organisation in life sciences owned by six Finnish universities.

The technology platforms coordinated by BF cover key technologies in life sciences and provide open access services to 17,000 academic, healthcare, and industry researchers across the country.

Biocenter Finland is widely considered a good example of the coordination and strategic use of financial and human resources within a specific discipline. The participating universities are the University of Helsinki, University of Eastern Finland, University of Oulu, Tampere University and Åbo Akademi University.

Language data and use of technologies in social and human sciences

FIN-CLARIAH is a research infrastructure for social sciences and humanities involving Aalto University, CSC –  IT Center for Science in Finland, the University of Helsinki, University of Jyväskylä, University of Oulu, University of Turku and Tampere University,

The project improves infrastructure support by enabling the processing of spoken minority language data and providing tools for a broad range of SSH research that processes unstructured text. The infrastructure facilitates research on audiovisual culture and supports SSH researchers in the implementation of transformer technology.

Multidisciplinary environmental measuring to meet air quality and climate change challenges

INAR RI is an umbrella RI for coordinating the distributed national nodes of four European environmental research infrastructures. The partners comprise the University of Helsinki, CSC – IT Center for Science in Finland, Finnish Environment Institute, Finnish Meteorological Institute, Natural Resources Institute Finland, Tampere University, University of Eastern Finland, University of Helsinki, University of Oulu, and University of Turku.

The project integrates multidisciplinary comprehensive environmental measuring and consists of observation stations, laboratories, mobile units and two data infrastructures.

The project develops services to meet air quality and climate change challenges. The project greatly supports the national goal of carbon neutrality by providing data on urban and agricultural emissions.

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The Research Council of Finland is set to make more funding decisions on 31 January 2024 based on the 2023 research infrastructure call.

Research Council of Finland’s press release dated 5 December 2023