Nordic Centres of Excellence 1
In 2007, NordForsk launched its most important funding instrument: the Nordic Centre of Excellence (NCoE) scheme. The objective of the NCoE model is to increase and facilitate 4 cooperation between outstanding researchers, researcher groups or institutions in the Nordic countries. An NCoE can operate as a virtual or physical centre and is headed by a project manager. Centre participants must come from at least three different Nordic countries and work together on research projects within the centre’s priority thematic area. Five Nordic Centres of Excellence were established in 2007 under two main programmes. Three of these centres were in the research area of food, nutrition and health and two in the area of welfare research. These programmes recently con cluded their periods, and the results of their activities are currently being evaluated. The evaluation is expected to be completed in spring 2014 and focuses both on how successful the collaboration model has proven to be, and on the research findings that it has produced.
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