Strategic initiatives at the LTV Faculty – seed money call for interdisciplinary and thematic research projects

Background

This is the second round of an initiative that ties in with the LTV Faculty Strategy 2021–2025. The aim is to initiate up to four interdisciplinary projects, which is the same number of projects that were decided in the first round of this initiative. To further strengthen the link to the strategies at SLU and LTV, this year’s seed money call will have two thematic focuses:

• The next step for sustainable development
• Digitalisation and technology

As this initiative will contribute to attracting more external funding, it is also motivated by the financing focus outlined in the LTV Faculty strategy.

Purpose, objective and scope

The purpose of the initiative is to develop and strengthen the quality of our research, to meet new knowledge needs and to increase external research funding by employing an interdisciplinary and system perspective approach across the departments. The initiative is also expected to contribute to the development and quality of educational activities. Furthermore, this strategic seed money initiative should lead to successful larger externally funded research projects in line with the strategies of the faculty and departments.

Funding should be sought for developing research applications but can also be sought for other activities that strengthen the planned applications – for example pilot projects and studies, and knowledge syntheses. Each application has to include at least two departments at the LTV Faculty, and can be used to both develop new constellations of collaborations and further develop existing ones. The applications should have a strong research focus, can involve research competences outside of the faculty, and even involve external collaborations within the green sector.

Time plan and process

The application process is divided into two stages, a draft (step 1) followed by a complete application (step 2).

• Drafts (step 1) must be submitted to tomas.osterman@slu.se by January 23 2023.
• Successful candidates will be notified on February 6 2023.
• The complete applications (step 2) must then be submitted by March 6 2023 to tomas.osterman@slu.se.
• The decisions will be sent out once the minutes from the faculty board’s meeting on April 12 2023 have been finalised.

The aim is to finance up to four seed money applications with up to SEK 500 000 each. A review panel – consisting of the dean, deputy dean, research officer, vice dean for doctoral education, head of faculty administration and the faculty board’s member of the working committee of the faculty board – will assess the drafts in step 1 and propose prioritisations. The dean decides which drafts will proceed to step 2 where they will be developed to complete applications. The faculty board decides which of the complete applications will be granted funding based on suggestions from the review panel.

Requirements and assessment criteria

The following requirements must be fulfilled by each project:

• Include a research idea that has to be innovative/new and shows a clear development compared to already existing research activities, whilst being feasible.
• Contribute to the development of strategically important external and internal research collaborations that renew, complement and strengthen the departments, the faculty and SLU.
• Link to the faculty’s and departments’ strategic prioritisations by addressing either (or both) of the two thematic focuses.
• Be interdisciplinary, i.e. incorporating different scientific disciplines, and include a system perspective.
• Include at least two departments at the faculty.
• Aim to create a full-scale research application. However, they do not need to aim for a specific call.

Main applicants of previously granted projects in the first round of this initiative that have not been finalised, are not eligible to apply as main applicants in this round.

The review panel will assess the project drafts and applications based on the extent to which they fulfill these requirements.

The draft must include

• Name and departmental affiliation of the main applicant (must be an LTV Faculty employee) and the co-applicants.
• Explanation of how the project contributes to the purpose, objective and scope of the call, and a description of how it meets the requirements and assessment criteria above.
• Timetable (granted projects must be completed by December 2024).
• Budget outline. The maximum amount available for each application is SEK 500 000. Applications for funding salaries can only be made for people who are active at the faculty or who will have an appointment at the faculty within the framework for the project in question.
• Short CV for each applicant.