Norway providing EUR 2.9 mln for Estonian scientists' research work

Photo: SCANPIX

The Estonian Research Council has approved decisions assigning grants from the Norwegian-Estonian Research Cooperation Program by which a total of 2.9 million euros are provided to 13 projects.

Of the projects eight are led by researchers from the University of Tartu and the sum total paid to such projects is over 1.7 million euros, spokespeople for the University of Tartu said.

The largest grant, of 300,000 euros, was awarded to researcher Leho Tedersoo from the University of Tartu Botanical and Mycological Museum. The aim of the funded project, titled "Determining Arctic mycoflora using the means of biodiversity informatics," is to map Arctic fungal communities and study the impact of further global warming in active cooperation with Norwegian colleagues.

«The additional funding will mostly be spent on the newest and most expensive new generation DNA sequencing methods and large bioinformatical data analysis of metagenomic data,» Tedersoo said. He said the project allows to carry out wide-scale field studies from Estonia to Northern Scandinavia and in Svalbard, as well as organize student-researcher exchange.

The University of Tartu projects funded in the current round include four projects from the research area of culture and society, two from environment and biosciences, one from physical sciences and engineering and one from the area of health. Each project has at least one partner from Norway.

Altogether 170 applications for a total of 48.2 million euros were filed. The overall purpose of the Norwegian-Estonian Research Cooperation Program is to support research and development activities in Estonia through research cooperation.