Five VIDI grants for UG researchers
Five VIDI grants for UG researchers
Door Christien Boomsma
By Christien Boomsma
Christien Boomsma
Kerstin Bunte with the Faculty of Science and Engineering is going to set up a project within Artificial Intelligence. She wants to develop systems that link the predictive power of AI to the explanations that computer models can provide. This can lead to – for example – individually adjusted medication.
Else Starkenburg and Lingyu Wang, also with FSE, are both trying to unravel the secrets of the universe. Starkenburg is doing that by tracking down the oldest stars in the Milky Way to get a better view of the early years of our galaxy. Lingyu Wang will be using artificial intelligence to measure the impact of mergers on how galaxies and black holes grow.
Peace strategies
The arts faculty wins a VIDI with David van der Linden’s research. He’ll examine how France managed to restore peace after the religious wars of the sixteenth century. He hopes to gain more insight into the long-term effects of peace strategies.
Finally, Sebastiaan Mathôt of Behavioural and Social Sciences will research to what extent we can influence our senses with our brains.
More applicants
NWO received 503 applications in this funding round. 261 of them were submitted by men, 252 by women. They awarded 16 percent of the total number of applications; 15 percent of men’s submissions, and 17 percent of those by women.
That means the number of applications has increased again. Since 2017, NWO has required an ’embedding guarantee’. Researchers must demonstrate that the institute they are conducting research for supports them. As a result, the number of applications initially fell from 589 (2017) to 443 (2018) and the percentage of awarded applications went from nineteen to fifteen percent.
Spokesperson Poppy Savenije of NWO acknowledges that the embedding guarantee has not had a ‘dampening effect’ yet. The data will be evaluated. ‘But at this point it is still too early to predict the consequences of theses results for the next round.’