The announcement brings the total number of Vici grants awarded in this round of research funding to 34. The first 12 researchers from the fields of applied technical sciences and health research and care innovation received their grants back in February. The pandemic then threw the NWO’s plans into disarray, delaying the announcement for Vici recipients in the fields of the exact and natural sciences, and the social sciences and humanities.
The grant will enable the researchers to fund their research project for five years. The projects acknowledged range from “the first steps of galaxies” to “the welfare state of tomorrow”.
Awards percentage
The Vici grant is aimed at advanced researchers and is awarded by the NWO on an annual basis. A total of 306 applications were submitted for this round, 34 of which were awarded.
Most of the applications came from men (65.7 percent) and this is reflected in the allocation: 24 Vici grants have gone to male candidates and 10 to female candidates. This represents a success rate of 11.9 percent for men and 9.5 percent for women.
Coincidental
In the field of health research and care innovation, none of the 23 female candidates feature among the six winners. NWO assures us that this is ‘’entirely coincidental’’. Two years ago, grants were awarded to six female candidates and not a single male in this field.
The highest success rate is to be found in the applied technical sciences, where 15.8 percent of the applications came through the selection procedure. Grants in this field were awarded to two of the eight female candidates (25 percent).
