Funding Awarded to Hire EATRIS Norway Coordinator

NCMM and EATRIS Norway have been awarded a grant from the Helse-EU programme at the Research Council of Norway to recruit an EATRIS (European Infrastructure for Translational Medicine) Coordinator.

This is fantastic for EATRIS Norway, as the coordinator will be able to assist with more efficient mobilisation of Norwegian resources when it comes to increasing involvement in the European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC).

The Helse-EU initiative behind this funding was set up to encourage Norwegian researchers to get involved with Horizon 2020. This is a flagship EU research and innovation initiative that aims to promote breakthroughs, discoveries, and world-firsts by taking the brightest and best research from lab to market. NCMM and EATRIS Norway were successful with their project application, ‘EATRIS Norway: from bench to bed? State of the art infrastructure and organisation bridging the gap between basic and clinical research.’

Norway's EATRIS membership

Norway officially became a full member of EATRIS ERIC in 2016. Made up of over 80 academic institutions across 12 European countries, EATRIS has the infrastructure and expertise needed to facilitate the complex process of translating biological insights of disease into effective interventions in a clinical setting, across a large geographical area.

Norway’s EATRIS membership consists of the University of Oslo, the University of Bergen, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and UiT The Arctic University of Norway. Norway’s four regional health authorities in Southwestern, Western, Central and Northern Norway also form part of the membership.

NCMM is responsible for coordinating the entire Norwegian membership, and holds all responsibility for the national administration of the partnership. One of NCMM’s main objectives is to ensure that there is close cooperation across the infrastructure, and the new EATRIS Coordinator role will play a big part in this process.

Close cooperation is vital for facilitating access to specialised facilities and expertise across the organization. Closer cooperation means stronger Norwegian contributions to translational research on a European level, and a more competitive European research arena.

How the coordinator role will help improve Norway's integration with wider European research

By having a single coordination point centred around the new role, NCMM will be able to mobilise resources far more effectively than before. The role will help to facilitate more integration of Norwegian research into the wider European research landscape, alongside more efficient mobilisation of Norwegian resources.

A formal call for the coordinator position will be released shortly.

By Annabel Darby
Published Jan. 25, 2017 2:52 PM - Last modified Feb. 20, 2017 3:44 PM