NOK 40 million to joint Sino-Norwegian research

Professor Liu Congqiang, Vice President of the NSFC, and John-Arne Røttingen, Chief Executive of the Research Council, look forward to expanded cooperation between their two countries in the years ahead.

The Research Council of Norway (RCN) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) have started a program funding Sino-Norwegian joint research. The aim of the bilateral cooperation is to contribute to world-class scientific research results in the field of sustainable agriculture, food security and food safety, and integrated multi-stressor impacts on ecosystems.

A budget of up to NOK 40 million in total will be available from the RCN for allocation in Norway, and matching funding is available from NSFC for allocation in China. The application submission deadline will be on 25 April 2018. More information on the application can be found here.

The joint call is a follow-up to the cooperation agreement between the two national research councils that was signed during Prime Minister Erna Solberg’s visit to China in April 2017.

“In recent years, China has emerged as a major actor in international research cooperation, on a par with the US,” says Thomas Hansteen, the Research Council’s contact person for China. “This will be the first of what we hope will be annual joint calls with the NSFC. Over the next few years, the calls will encompass thematic areas targeted towards achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals”