The research activity for 2014 at K2 is strongly characterized by a large volume and enthusiasm for external funding. As the year is almost at an end, it could be wise to summarize the status for application writing done to obtain funding for research. There is no doubt that application activity at K2 has been very high, something which deserves lots of praise. A lot of focus has been aimed at Horizon2020, and now that many of the announcements have closed, you might think that people have become a bit tired of the process. Of course many might wait for answers/results before they decide whether or not the effort has been worth it.

The impression is that those who apply the most, within all fields, are also those applying for the most competitive announcements such as FRIPRO and H2020 – so this does not indicate application tiredness. However, these are always the most active applicants. The question becomes how many new applicants there are at K2 – how many actually dare, and bother to, participate?

Regarding application status – 17 applications have been sent from K2 to NFR/FRIPRO. Six of these have also applied H2020. In total, 16 stage-2 applications have been sent to H2020. Among these are 5 applications for coordinator status (7 have been sent in total from MOF) and this is statistically very good.

In addition, this is just a part of our application activity, and does not include all the applications to The Norwegian Cancer Society, BMF/BMFS, Health and Rehabilitation, Helse Vest, etc. But in principle, only EU and NFR include contribution margin (overheads).

Further, how and when should one initiate, for instance, an EU application? A good time to start would be during a postdoc-period. Young people, in an early stage of their career, are most in need of obtaining skills in writing applications, and these people should be included in any large-scale application writing.

So now we eagerly await feedback in the upcoming weeks …..

Roland