The €4.8 million Czech research fund supports academic research within all the priority sectors of the EEA and Norway Grants and is earmarked for cooperation projects between research teams from the Czech Republic and the EEA EFTA states.
The National Training Fund, managing the fund, recently concluded evaluating the proposals from the fund's second call. Grants have now been awarded to 15 projects in the fields of environmental protection, geology, preventive medicine and social movements.
The supported projects include a study examining new prognostic markers in leukaemia among children, a research project on the use of genotypes in relation to vaccinations against lung disease and a study of the global emo sub-culture among adolescents. Several of the projects are pioneer studies within their fields.
According to Roman Vyhnánek, head of the fund project team, the fund's greatest impact has been its ability to establish arenas for cooperation between researchers in the Czech Republic and the donor states. Donor state partners include Rikshospitalet University Hospital in Oslo, Landspitali University Hospital in Reykjavik and the Norwegian Social Research Institute. Among the successful applicants are universities, institutes of the Academy of science, national health facilities and non governmental organisations.
Descriptions of all the supported projects are available at the fund's web site.