Greetings from the Department – 13.01.2022

Foto: privat

Dear colleagues,

I had hoped that this week I could give a summary and status of the financial year 2022, and not least tell how we fared. On Friday 06 January, the financial year 2022 was closed, but it will still take some time before we can say what the result for the year was. The finance office is working on the accounts, and they expect to have the numbers ready for reporting 18 January. I will keep you updated as soon as we have the reports in hand.

Regardless of how things went in 2022, ahead of us is spring’s most beautiful adventure: the NFR application deadlines. We started work on this already last year, when we informed about deadlines for expressing interest, and the milestones for the time leading up to the deadlines. The first application deadline already hits us Wednesday 08 February. There are also application deadlines of 15 February and 15 March. In the run-up to the applications, the project economists will prepare a budget in accordance with BIO’s guidelines for budgeting. The guidelines were updated last November:

https://ekstern.filer.uib.no/bio/Informasjon/2022/BIO_BUDGETING_GUIDELINES_updated_25.11.22.pdf

Finally, the budgets will be reviewed and approved by me before submitting the application.

And why is this relevant to you if you are not applying for the NFR this year? Then you know that both the project economists and myself will get quite busy as the deadlines approach, and that it may not be as easy to be flexible and available at short notice. We spend a lot of time on this because it is important for us to get quality applications with the appropriate budgets and rates. I think we all realize how important external funds are to us, and in the years ahead it will only become more important. These applications will potentially be our research, professional development and income in the years to come, and the work put in now before the application deadline is valuable to us. I wish all applicants the best of luck and thank everyone else for your patience during what will be a hectic but fun period.

Beste hilsen, Julie

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Julie Stavnes

Head of administration