The NCOH wants to build a research programme that sharpens its profile and increases scientific output during its first mandated period. This goal will be obtained by accelerating the investments of NCOH Partners. This initiative results from the last joint Supervisory and Executive Board meeting, held in September 2017, and decisions taken by the Executive Board.

Bridging Strategic Research Themes

The research programme will consist of research topics that bridge the four NCOH Strategic Research Themes, i.e., Tackling Antimicrobial Resistance, Emerging Infectious Diseases Preparedness, Healthy Wildlife & Ecosystems, and Smart & Healthy Farming. The programme will be designed to align with the NCOH Strategic Research Agenda and clearly link to the different Solution Sets. The research topics should be interdisciplinary, interinstitutional and innovative, and should lure researchers out of their comfort zones.

The research programme will be constructed over two rounds. Firstly, NCOH Principal Investigators will be asked to provide proposals for research topics. The Executive Board will select, and where necessary, combine and compile these topics. Then, during a second round, Principal Investigators will be asked to submit proposals in response to a call. Each research proposal should accommodate a minimum of three PhD student projects (equivalent to € 750,000), and involve at least two NCOH partners. It is expected that, depending on the topic and opportunities, either some collaboration between research topic consortia and industry will occur, or additional funding will be generated via competitive research funds, or that funding from EU calls will become more likely. The call for proposals will be sent out in February with an accompanying deadline set for 5 March, 2018. Please refer to the PDF Profiling research topics and PhD-consortia for more details.