The results from this year’s evaluation and financing round from the Swedish Research Council (VR for Vetenskapsrådet) has now arrived (nov 2010), and it turned out that both me and Peter came out on a very good side of things.
* Peter Strålfors got an increase from already high 900 000 SEK/year to 1 000 000/year, during the next 3 years
* I got a research fellowship position (Forskarassistent) which means salary for me and additional money, in total approx 5.5 MSEK during the next 4 years.
There are several reasons why this is very good news. First, VR has the only really ambitious evaluation process in Sweden, where they really evaluate you by the science. This means that this is the best such quality stamp that you can get on the national level, and we both got almost as high as you can get (our group got ranked as “worldleading”, for instance). For this reason, it means that this increased money we got now will be multiplied by making it even easier to get money from other funding sources in the future: from the university there is an automatic co-funding of approximately the same order of magnitude; many other research agencies simply look at what you got from VR and scale their financing by that; and this outcome means that Peter will stay among the league of prioritized professors at University. Finally, my specific position means that I have a 4 year position ensured, which is a high-status position, and which generally goes beyond the post doc level. Since this is the “magic” step in scientific carreer (e.g., this year only 8% approval) this means that I now have very good chances of implementing my various scientific plans, for instance by keep building up my research group here in Linköping on a long-term basis etc.
So now we just need to figure out how to best celebrate and make use of these new possibilities! 🙂
