University of Turku involved in four national lighthouse infrastructures

03.02.2025

The Finnish Research Infrastructure Committee (FIRI Committee) within the Research Council of Finland selected in December 21 research infrastructures to Finland’s national roadmap for research infrastructures 2025–2028. The University of Turku is involved in the implementation of eleven infrastructures. In January, the Research Council of Finland has made the final funding decisions and selected selected six research infrastructures as ‘lighthouse’ infrastructures.

The Committee decided on 2 December 2024 to fund the selected roadmap infrastructures with around 15 million euros, and on 27 January 2025 with just over 35 million euros. In total, around 127 million euros has been earmarked for roadmap infrastructures during the period 2025–2029.

The roadmap is a document that identifies the major national research infrastructures that are part of Finland's research infrastructure ecosystem. It is a tool for the research community, policy-makers and funders to guide investment and support research, development and innovation.

The aim of the roadmap is to ensure that research infrastructures remain internationally competitive, are able to respond to both current and future scientific challenges, generate new knowledge and expertise, and interact with RDI actors.

The University of Turku involved in four lighthouse infrastructures

From among the roadmap research infrastructures, the FIRI Committee also selected six research infrastructures as ‘lighthouse’ infrastructures. The University of Turku is involved in four of them. 

Lighthouse status is granted to research infrastructures that have been the most successful infrastructures in the roadmap call, meet the lighthouse criteria and lead the way in all key infrastructure areas, such as service provision, impact, functionality and shared use. The lighthouses are showcases of and spearheads for the service offer and impact of roadmap research infrastructures.

Lighthouse infrastructures in which the University of Turku is involved are: 

  • Biocenter Finland (BF)
  • Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure (FIN-CLARIAH)
  • Euro-BioImaging Finland: Research Infrastructure for Imaging Technologies in Biological and Biomedical Sciences (EB-Fi)
  • Integrated Atmospheric and Earth System Science Research Infrastructure (INAR RI)

Infrastructures of the roadmap receive funding 

All the research infrastructures selected for the roadmap will receive a total of €130 million in funding. Some of the research infrastructures have received their funding decisions in December, and the rest received their funding decisions at the end of January 2025.

The funding decisions of the University of Turku in January:

  • Biocenter Finland (BF), Elenius, Klaus, €1,754,691
  • The Finnish Infrastructure for Register-Based Research (FIRE), Erola, Jani, €554,979 
  • EURO-BIOIMAGING:Research Infrastructure for Imaging Technologies in Biological and Biomedical Sciences (EuBI-Fi), Knuuti, Juhani, €1,768,281
  • Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure (FIN-CLARIAH), Laippala, Veronika, €145,808 

Created 03.02.2025 | Updated 03.02.2025