What are life sciences?
In the University of Oslo strategy we define life sciences as
- all scientific disciplines studying the composition, structure and functions of living organisms
- medicine and biology constitute the core, backed by chemistry, physics and mathematical subjects
This strategy also includes the social sciences and humanities when these
- examine causal relationships between behaviour or consciousness and the biological foundation,
- or analyse challenges arising in the encounter between the application of the life sciences and society’s values and priorities
Convergence
Convergence in research and education entails a ground-breaking integration through extensive collaboration among researchers from different disciplines with the aim of creating new areas of knowledge, new applications and opportunities.
Goals
- Perform excellent interdiciplinary science and research (“beyond state-of-the-art”).
- Recruit, educate and develop talents
- Promote innovation in the life sciences related to environment and health
Requirements
- No thematic limitations
- Should connect to the UiO strategy for life sciences
- Should address questions too complex for one single discipline related to grand challenges in health and sustainable growth
- Should include RRI activities (RRI – Responsible Research and Innovation)
Read the paper Responsible research and innovation: From science in society to science for society, with society. - Should integrate humanities and social sciences.
- Should involve end users when relevant.
- At least one panel member must participate in the planned workshops.
- Project leader has to be employed at UiO.
- Applicants should present a plan for attracting additional external funding.
About the funding
- Cluster funding with 3–4 PhD positions each. In exeptional cases one or two of the positions can be converted to post.doc positions, an action that has to be justified in the application.
- The PhD candidates will be employed by the departments at UiO and will attend PhD programs at UiO.
-
The candidates can have a year of compulsory work funded by UiO:Life Science to be used strategically. If the candidates are expected to teach at the host department, the host department must cover the year of compulsory work and this will not be part of the funding from UiO:Life Science.
-
Running expenses: Up to NOK 250 000 per position per year for costly experimental work. Expenses must be specified and justified in a few lines for each position. Up to NOK 250 000 per year for other activities for the convergence consortium. Expenses should promote convergence and must be specified and justified in a few lines. For particularly cost demanding projects, the limits can be concidered adjusted, please specify the needs clearly in the application.
- The departments are expected to support the convergence environments.
UiO:Life Science will this time fund 5–6 convergence environments.