back new knowledge into the region, and this is as important as any new money.” NordForsk implements a new strategy every four
years, believing that reviewing its approach to what it is doing, understanding what has worked well and identifying the most pressing research challenges will keep things fresh and relevant. After its most recent review, its latest four-year plan is seen very much as an evolution of its previous strategy, but one on which implementation and action plans can be added with a longer-term view. This long-term view is now placing an emphasis on research infrastructure
as a key area for
cooperation because, as Professor Gustafsson says: “Infrastructure is expensive.”
accomplished as it may seem,” she continues. “The research community
looks at
the long term,
industry wants quick results and politicians want to win elections. So to create these platforms where they can come together and discuss concrete plans and issues is very valuable. “Publically-funded research also has to pay
society back – it uses our money. So although much of the research they fund will deliver things they don’t know they need, it is important for them to be involved in the dialogue, so it is important that researchers communicate effectively so people know that something is going on with that public investment.” With its new strategy in place and a renewed
“What we will do now is alert those who are looking at
funding through Horizon 2020 or the ERC about the further
opportunities that exist in this collaboration, either in finding the right people to work with or in accessing other funding options”
The new strategy also emphasises the need for
research to make an impact on society, in other words make those who will actually use the research outcomes aware of the research results when they arise. An example of NordForsk engaging with end users
comes from its climate programme, when
researchers worked with private insurance companies and developers, who provided funds as well, to develop a Nordic map so that planners could discover where it was safe to build and not in danger of landslip or other dangers. This was published and is now freely available. “It was a good example of researchers cooperating with the end users to provide them with something that was useful and based on something they needed,” explains Professor Gustafsson. “Of course we need to balance this need to deliver
research for the real world that has commercial value and meets a specific need, with conducting research into the unknown and finding things that people don’t actually know they need,” she continues. “That is very important to avoid being too narrow in our outlook. “I believe that dialogue between the research
community, the political community and industry is hugely important – but it is not as easily
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commitment to collaborate within the Nordic region and more internationally, Professor Gustafsson is positive about the future of NordForsk. “I think our bigger programmes, like health, climate
and education are broad enough to continue to elaborate,” she explains highlighting the fact that the region will continue to work on some of the grand global challenges in cooperation with other countries in programmes like Horizon 2020. But she is perhaps more excited about the potential
she sees in more Nordic-focused research on health and social development based on the region’s unique and substantial registered data, both medical and social. This infrastructure resource, she believes, has huge potential if cooperation takes place effectively, both in terms of funding and the sharing of data. “These provide invaluable research data, so we have had to work extensively to overcome the ethical and legal issue surrounding the use of personal data for broad-based research,” she says. “There is a lot of good research within a specific
area – genomes and specific cancers for example – but to combine social and health issues with the help of a profound database would be very useful,” she elaborates. “Many of the diseases we suffer from and spend
a lot of money on to cure are both emerging from conditions within society as well as from our biological destiny,” she continues. “So my ambition would be to build this registry-based research to look much more closely at what could be done from each angle. “We are not there yet, but we have worked a lot on
overcoming national barriers and in certain areas such as clinical trials we have done a lot in terms of sharing data across borders. In terms of sharing individual health and social data, we need to be very careful not to violate personal integrity, but if we could do that then we have the data in the Nordic countries that could be almost revolutionary – we could understand all aspects of health; how it is distributed, what social conditions impact on it, the relationship between employment and health. These are the types of issues that we need to research and we have the personal data available in the Nordic region to do so.”
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