The agreement ensures that partners actively share information, align resources, and support each other to facilitate multidisciplinary research. It provides a structured framework for strategic planning, research programmes, and budgets, enabling teams to push the boundaries of brain, cognition, and behavioural science. By fostering collaboration and coordinating efforts, the network helps researchers tackle complex questions that no single institution could address alone.
A key example of how the Donders Institute translates this to action is the Donders Institute Research Stimulation Fund. The call closed in December after receiving many wonderful and exciting proposals to fund focus groups and collaborative research initiatives. As in the previous year, the call was heavily oversubscribed. We received 34 applications, of which 20 were awarded. The Donders Research Platform was responsible for selecting the successful proposals. At the same time, we will continue to explore opportunities to secure additional funding. According to the Executive Board, these projects represent promising “seeds” to plant, and we are excited to see how they grow and what results they will yield in the coming year.
In the new year, José Marques (DCCN) has been appointed as the new theme leader of Theme 4: Natural Computing and Neurotechnology, taking over from Fleur Zeldenrust. José is an associate PI at the DCCN, a physicist who studies the brain using quantitative MRI. We would like to thank Fleur for her commitment and leadership, and we wish José every success in connecting researchers and stimulating new collaborations within this exciting and rapidly developing theme. We will return to this appointment in more detail later.