Research Council of Finland

The Research Council of Finland (RCF) has drawn up a shortlist of 34 applications that will proceed to the second stage of the call for Finnish Centres of Excellence 2026–2033. The first call stage attracted 188 letters of intent.

The Research Council of Finland (RCF) has launched a funding call to improve universities’ ability to recruit international experts to Finland. In line with the RCF’s strategy, the call will promote internationalisation and strengthen competence centres and research environments. With a preliminary total budget of 50 million euros, the call will fund university recruitments between 2026 and 2030.

Researchers at 60 different intensive care units around the world are seeking to establish methods to expedite and improve post-cardiac arrest recovery at ICUs. The research is led by Markus Skrifvars, Staff Specialist in Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care and Professor of Prehospital Emergency Medicine at University of Helsinki, jointly with Professor Niklas Nielsen from Lund University. Professor Skrifvars’ part of the research is funded by the Research Council of Finland.

Extended reality makes it possible to artificially modify human sensations. For example, researchers have succeeded in using extended reality to make vegetarian food even more attractive. “This could be one way of facilitating more ecologically diverse food production and, at the same time, encouraging people to eat healthier,” says Roope Raisamo, a professor in human-technology interaction at Tampere University, who has been carrying out research on extended reality for different use cases with funding from the Research Council of Finland (RCF) for years.

The Strategic Research Council (SRC) established within the Research Council of Finland has invited 28 consortia to the second stage of the SRC programme call.

The Research Council of Finland (RCF) today published the call texts for the 2025 spring call. The call texts are available in English, Finnish and Swedish. The review guidelines and forms are only available in English.

The Research Council of Finland’s winter call 2025 closed on Wednesday 8 January with a total of 3,323 applications submitted. The total number includes consortium subprojects as separate applications. If each consortium is counted as a single application, the total number of applications comes to 2,846.

The Research Council of Finland (RCF) has awarded a total of 10 million euros to 32 projects, in all 39 subprojects, in the Proof of Concept call. The application success rate was 17 per cent.

The Research Council of Finland today announced some 3 million euros in funding under the call for Antarctic research projects, which was open in April 2024.

The Strategic Research Council (SRC) established within the Research Council of Finland has granted 29 million euros to support research into the future of democracy and water security. The ten consortia of projects to be funded focus on long-term research to find solutions to key societal challenges.

The Strategic Research Council (SRC) established within the Research Council of Finland is launching two new strategic research programmes. The six-year programmes start in late 2025.

The Research Council of Finland (RCF) and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) have granted funding under a joint call for applications in the field of 6G and quantum technology. The RCF has granted a total of 1 million euros to fund the Finnish parties in four joint Finnish-Korean research projects. The projects are set to run for three years.

The Research Council of Finland (RCF) today published the call texts for the 2025 winter call. The call texts are available in English, Finnish and Swedish. The review guidelines and review forms are available only in English. The winter call also includes a call opened within the Academy Programme for Sport Science and Physical Activity.

The US National Science Foundation (NSF) and partner funding agencies in the US, Canada, Finland, Japan, South Korea and the UK have announced awards totalling some 74 million euros (82 million dollars) in their Global Centers funding competition.

The Research Council of Finland’s calls for researcher mobility applications open on 21 August 2024. The closing date for applications is 25 September 2024. The application periods for German and Japanese counterparts close in early September. More details are available in the call texts.

The Research Council of Finland is set to open a call for applications for membership in international research infrastructures. The call offers Finnish research organisations the opportunity to apply for membership in new international research infrastructures with members at national level.

The Research Council of Finland is continuing its annual funding call to promote the economic and societal utilisation of research results. The Proof of Concept funding scheme has been prepared through a pilot call last year and will be implemented using additional funding allocated by the Finnish Government for research and development. The utilisation idea must arise from research previously funded by the Research Council. This year, the call is open to principal investigators of Academy Projects whose funding period has ended or ends between 1 January 2023 and 31 December 2024.

On 28 March 2024, the Research Council of Finland and Business Finland signed a new five-year memorandum of understanding on a programme of cooperation in scientific and technological research and innovation with the US National Science Foundation (NSF).

The Research Council of Finland’s spring 2024 call documents are now available online. Applications are invited between 3 April and 8 May 2024. The FIRI roadmap call for research infrastructures is open until 15 May.

The largest single international co-funding by the scientific councils – around 1.36 million euros – was the ERA-NET funding for research on long-term ICT challenges.