Eight million for top PhDs

10 August 2010

Ten research schools will each receive 800,000 euro for talented young researchers. The schools can use the grants to set up an excellent education and research programme for the development of young scientific talent. This grant, the Graduate Programme of the Netherlands Organisation for scientific Research (NWO), is contributing to a stronger development of Dutch PhD students.

A research school is a provider of a coherent masters and PhD training programme and is part of one or more universities and/or institutes. The research schools have been set up to provide the most talented students who are interested in an academic career with an excellent training and research environment. The schools have been developed according to the examples of the most successful initiatives worldwide.

More freedom for PhDs

The combination of education and research under a single roof offers both students and universities and optimal preparation for an academic career. The PhD students have more choice in the direction their research will take and the choice of supervisor. The research schools have the advantage that they can attract the most talented students for the education programme and from these select the best researchers for a PhD position.

In the Graduate Programme, local and national research schools and Graduate Schools could request a grant. Ten of the 29 schools that requested funding have been awarded a grant for the appointment of four PhD students.

Future

The Graduate Programme has been developed at the request of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW). This is the second funding round. A total of 19 schools have now received a grant for the appointment of about 56 PhD students. Each of the PhDs has a four-year appointment. NWO will now evaluate the programme together with OCW, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU). The aim is to set up a structural Graduate Programme from 2011 onwards with an annual budget of about 15 million euro.

About NWO

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) is the principal Dutch science funding body and its mission is to facilitate excellent scientific research in the Netherlands by means of national competition. Each year NWO spends more than 700 million euro on grants for top researchers, on innovative instruments and equipment, and on institutes where top research is performed. NWO funds the research of more than 5300 talented researchers at universities and institutes. Independent experts select proposals by means of a peer review system. NWO facilitates the transfer of knowledge to society.

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Further information:

List of awards:

  • Behavioural Science Graduate School, Radboud University Nijmegen
  • C.T. de Wit Research School for Production Ecology and Resource Conservation - Wageningen University and Research Centre
  • Dutch Institute of Systems and Control, Delft University of Technology
  • Groningen Graduate School of Medical Sciences (GUIDE), University of Groningen
  • Institute for Complex Molecular Systems, Eindhoven University of Technology
  • Netherlands Institute for Health Sciences, Erasmus University Rotterdam
  • N.W. Posthumus Institute – Leiden University
  • Research School Subatomic Physics (OSAF), Radboud University Nijmegen
  • Tilburg Graduate Law School, Tilburg University
  • Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS (UIL-OTS), Utrecht University
last modified on 13 September 2010