The Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation

On Friday I took part in the annual meeting of the Council of Principals of the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (KAW). The Council of Principals is made up of the presidents of Sweden’s largest universities and we have an advisory role for the foundation’s activities.

KAW is one of the important financiers of research in Sweden. Since Göran Sandberg’s appointment as Executive Director of the board its strategy has changed course. KAW’s financing is today geared more towards grants for bigger projects, individual funding for researchers in two programmes (Wallenberg Academy Fellows and Wallenberg Scholars) and a number of strategic initiatives that the board initiates independently. Funding for infrastructure projects is being phased out.

Project applications are prioritised and sent in by the university presidents. In the two previous rounds of applications, KTH has had three projects approved. New applications were submitted to the foundation in February. It has been underlined that grants are intended for hypothesis-driven research and not the broad collaborative programmes of centres and institutes.

Strategic initiatives vary in nature. The council is currently discussing a mathematics programme comprising a post-doc programme to fund outgoing and visiting postdocs and a guest research programme. Institut Mittag-Leffler may also be receiving a grant within the programme framework. I strongly support this initiative and hope that the board of KAW takes an affirmative decision soon.

Another strategic initiative is a post-doc programme to Stanford, where the idea is to introduce an open call for proposals in all disciplinary research domains.

On Wednesday I attended the annual dialogue meeting at the Ministry of Education and Research. It was mainly dedicated to updating the ministry about our operations and discussing the forecasts for the next few years. One particular issue that I raised was the problem with the current admissions system for paying students and the need for a larger scholarship programme.

We also discussed the catastrophically low level of applicants to teacher training programmes in engineering and the natural sciences in Sweden. The ministry has called for proposals for improvements.

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