The Ministry of Education, Science and Sport will fund the establishment of five international centres of excellence: two in each of the fields of medical and technological sciences, and one each in agricultural and biological sciences. In total, this will involve a public investment of €42 million.
“These centres are set up with the involvement of international teams of researchers and their activities are based on common, pre-agreed research lines. Unlike individual projects, these will be long-term partnership platforms where researchers will collaborate consistently with strategic partners - leaders in specific fields of science,” says Regina Valutytė, Vice-Minister of Education, Science and Sport.
In addition to R&D activities in different scientific fields, the centres will also work on the commercialisation of scientific knowledge, i.e. turning research into products, services or solutions that can be applied in business or society and generate economic benefits.
The international centres of excellence will be set up by Vilnius University together with the Santaros klinikos and the Centre for Physical Sciences and Technology, Vilnius TECH together with Kaunas University of Technology, the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences together with the Kauno klinikos, and the Lithuanian Research Centre for Agriculture and Forestry together with Vytautas Magnus University.
The centres will be developed in collaboration with world-class research centres such as the Fraunhofer Institute (Germany), IMEC (Belgium), the Universities of Copenhagen, Utrecht and other universities and their centres.
