Funding decision for SmartBio seed-money application

SmartBio steering group members have decided in their meeting on 29.10.2020 which projects will be awarded with seed-money funding.

 

SmartBio received 19 funding applications for total 120 k€ of funding applied in the SmartBio seed-money call 2020. Steering committee has decided to fund the following 5 projects with total 21.1 k€, success rate being 26%.

 

Juha Kurkela in collaboration with Jussi Meriluoto
“Cell division in the cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803”
4000 €

Hariharan Dandapani and Daniel Solymosi
“A cloud-connected grow-box adapted for urban balconies in the Nordic climate”
2600 €

Rose-Marie Latonen in collaboration with Sergey Kosourov and Chunlin Xu
“Electrical energy generation by a photosynthetic bioelectrochemical cell consisting of photosynthetic microorganisms and scaffold”
5500 €

Xiaoja Lu
“Ultrafiltration system for purifying bio-macromolecules”
4500 €

Mikko Tikkanen and Pauli Kallio in collaboration with Iontau Oy
“AI-based optimization of production conditions”
4500 €

 

When making the funding decision the steering committee put weight especially on the fact that the project should join at least two different groups belonging to SmartBio and the project should involve younger group members. It was also considered as a positive asset if the idea for the project was arising from a younger team member and if the opening was something novel.

Unfortunately, some applications were not according to the guidelines (page limitation, appendices, application format) and this was considered as a negative asset when making the final decision.

 

It was a great joy to see our SmartBio team being this active in applying funding for joint projects! It seems SmartBio has succeeded in its mission to join together UTU and ÅAU researchers since we had so many excellent applications and it was not easy to make the decision.

Warm thank you for everyone who applied!

 

 

image: TheDigitalWay / pixabay