Education and Research
Sweden announces Super Investment in research – upping its stance in international biomedical and engineering research
Tuesday, 03 April 2012
Sweden is to launch an international research, Science for Life lab, with a turnover of one billion a year.
Operations is scheduled to begin in 2013 and then in cooperation with
Stockholm University, Karolinska Institute, Royal Institute of
Technology and Uppsala University. This was announced by Education
Minister Jan Björklund at a press conference on Tuesday.
Ccording to him, Swedish research has to meet and keep up with keep "world class".
“The goal is to attract top researchers from around the world,” says Jan Björklund according to Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter.
This will be achieved, according to the minister by providing them with
research at a very high level, and by generous research grants. A total
of "a thousand" scientists should be assigned to the various research
Institutes.
“I think that there will be certainty many foreign scientists that
would come here, but the bulk them will be Swedish,” says Jan Björklund.
For the minister “our ambition is that research from the beginning should be excellent.
Research must be interdisciplinary. The main disciplines are medicine, biology, chemistry, engineering and mathematics.”
At the above mentioned institutes, researches weighing the interest of
the authorities are, research on diseases such as cancer, diabetes,
cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer's, as well as means to unlock
antibiotic resistance.
The Swedish State will be the biggest donor, according to Bjorklund.
But even business sectors could contribute large sums. Some afore
motioned financiers are the wealthy people such as Knut and Alice
Wallenberg Foundation.
“We have already taken the decision to add Skr220 million this year and
next year for the Science for Life project,” said Peter Wallenberg, at
the press conference.
Even the pharmaceutical company, Astra Zeneca, had also shown interest in helping with research funding.
“What we want is to find the basic biology to understand disease
emergence and find new treatment options,” said AstraZeneca's CEO,
Anders Ekblom.
Research will be located in new facilities being built at the
Karolinska Institute in Solna. Some of the research will also be
conducted at the universities involved in the consortium.
By Scancomark.se Team
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