Annual Report 2008 - IVA

RTf focusing on eu
research programmes
eu research provides important results, both
in the form of knowledge and by enabling the
participants to influence future standards. The
eu’s programmes also make it easier from a
financial standpoint to create demonstrations
of new technical solutions, which is otherwise
difficult for individual companies or research
centres. The main problem is the slow processing
of applications. This was expressed by participants in ivA’s Royal
Technology forum 2008. small and medium-sized businesses have
their own form of support within the eu’s framework Programmes,
an opportunity that has increased their interest in becoming more
research oriented.
in 2008 iva launched a project to give
sweden an opportunity to learn from processes
used in other countries to prioritise
strategic research areas and provide these
with the appropriate resources. in order to
document the processes in other countries
an e-mail survey is being conducted during
the winter. This will be followed up by three
as a preliminary exercise for the project
on prioritisation within research and innovation,
ivA arranged a colloquium with national
and international participation. The colloquium
was organised to provide a forum
for an international exchange of experiences
and to generate ideas on how to structure
the task of prioritisation. issues discussed
were the structure of the research system,
Priorities for research and innovation
interviews per country. The aim is to learn
how ministers and civil servants act on the
recipient side and how research councils and
institutes work to execute research strategies.
As targets for the study ivA selected a
number of countries with clear similarities to
sweden: the netherlands, finland, switzer-
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science and Technology
for all, nTA is growing
science and technology for all, nTA,
is a project run jointly by ivA and the Royal
swedish Academy of science (kvA). in 2008
twelve new municipalities became members
of nTA. Today there are 93 members, 84 of
which are municipalities. The purpose of nTA
is to spark curiosity and increase interest
among both teachers and school children in
science and technology. ivA and kvA are jointly responsible for the
continuous development of the educational content in nTA. evaluations
of the programme have shown that their efforts have been
a success – school children who have worked with nTA themes
know more about science and technology.
international colloquium
on research and innovation
the need for financing for basic versus applied
research and issues of particular importance
for a small country like sweden.
Participants in the programme included esko
Aho, President of siTRA, finland; james A
weyhenmeyer, the Research foundation of
the state university of new york, usA; and
magnus Breidne, sweden’s science & Technology
Attaché to china.
land, israel, and a few countries with high
growth rates: singapore, Taiwan and south
korea.
The surveys and interviews will be concluded
in february 2009. The results will then
be compiled in a report to be presented in
june 2009.