NWO-I Management Report and Financial Statement 2022 online
The year 2022 was another successful year for the NWO Institutes. The development of very large research infrastructure for research, which they manage, was in full swing. For example, Nikhef received a large contribution from the National Growth Fund for the further development of the Einstein Telescope, ASTRON is working on the next upgrade of the world's largest radio telescope LOFAR, and DIFFER is committed to a new national infrastructure for materials for energy research.
In addition, as SRON and Nikhef jointly submitted a proposal to the Roadmap Large Scientific Infrastructure (which was honored in early 2023) to participate as a major partner in ESA/NASA's LISA mission, the first space detector for gravitational waves. Finally, in 2022, the first of three new research vessels for NIOZ, the Adriaen Coenen, was launched.
But there were downsides, too, in 2022. In February war broke out in Ukraine, which impacted our institutions. However, this was nothing compared to the suffering that fellow researchers in Ukraine had to endure and which posed problems for fellow researchers from Russia and Belarus.
As NWO administration, we reacted quickly by establishing an emergency fund for refugee researchers. Some of them found their way to our institutes, were hospitably received there and continued their research as best they could.
Progress has been made in 2022 in the area of science policy. For example, NWO-I was one of the first academic organizations in the Netherlands to set up a full implementation plan for Recognition and Rewards, to be rolled out in 2023. The Permanent Committee on National Institutes (PCNI) issued its advice in early 2022, and on this basis the Netherlands Climate Initiative (KIN) was launched together with the KNAW and almost all knowledge institutions in the Netherlands.
You will find the NWO-I Management Report and Financial Statement 2022 here. The English translation will be published in due course.