It is always exciting and nerve racking to wait for the results of the various grant applications every fall. This year we first learned that 2 groups received funding from the NovoNordisk Foundation. Shortly afterward a ERA-Net (Mellgren) and Marie Curie project (Johansson) was awarded to K2-researchers. Thereafter K2-researchers received large grants from The Norwegian Cancer Society. The Stian Knappskog was awarded one of the prestigious BFS-grants. This week K2-researchers have received large grants from The regional Health Authorities and NFR. The latter was divided amon 2 FRIPRO projects (Gjertsen, Njølstad), a mobility grant (Reksten), and a Young Investigator Grant (Bryceson). Altogether the NFR grants are worth 27 million NOK over 3 years. Finally, K2 captured 2 of the 3 PHD-grants announced from UiB.

Congratulations to all of you who have received grants. I also wantt to take the opportunity to thank all those who have helped writing these Grants. Thanks to Corina Guder and Sumathi Subramaniam for helping with grant applications, to Siv Eggereide and her team for putting together budgets and to Synnøve Myhre who has organized and overseen the work

To those of you that did not receive grants – send an improved application next year. To those of you who did not apply – do so next time!

Remember that NFR and EU grants come with overhead and are obtained in fierce competition on national and international competitors. This is very important for the K2’s economy – it now looks somewhat less bleas than last week. Next week we can worry about the budget, but this week I prefer to have a content smile

Have a peaceful weekend

Eystein

Head of Institute