Responsible for this support function: Senior Advisor Yamila Torres Cleuren.
The Centre has continued to build scientific collaborations and consortia, and we are now starting to see the results in the shape of increased collaborations (both national and international) and increased funding for our projects. Our highly interdisciplinary set-up allows us to design projects across the research groups, taking advantage of the different expertise available. An asset for our Centre is the work across the diseases; findings from one disease are being translated into the others (e.g., from PD to ALS, dementia, and MS), and we have developed new laboratory and clinical trial projects thanks to the interactions between the research groups. In addition, big efforts have gone towards European grants, which we see as long-term aims of the research at the Centre, as well as towards increasing the
visibility of the Centre. This is crucial for the success of our clinical trials, and to ensure that our projects go beyond national borders, increasing not only our national but also international collaborations. As a result, Neuro-SysMed now coordinates a new project “EBV-MS”, which received 7 million euros from the Horizon Europe program, which had its official start in December 2023. Getting this funding is a great boost for our teams and a sign of Neuro-SysMed research reaching the international stage.
In 2023, we have continued to receive external funding from our Regional Health Authorities (Helse Vest) in PhD projects, postdocs, a clinical fellowship grant and open project support for our clinical and translational projects; from KLINBEFORSK, we have secured funding for our first atypical parkinsonism trial; from the Norwegian Research Council we havereceived commercialisation funding; and funding from
private donors, patient organisations and foundations, providing invaluable support for our projects especially in the start-up phase, and for equipment.
Support for early career researchers
In previous years, we have organised workshops, individualised follow-up, research project conceptualisation and development and grant writing support for our postdoctoral researchers. We are continuing this targeted approach and further developing it to the needs of our researche s. We are seeing a high number of research grants going to our younger researchers, and they are in a higher degree (co-) supervising students, gaining independence, and taking on more senior roles.