Gravitation and Summit

At the UG. several researchers have been awarded large Gravitation or Summit grants from NWO. Through the Gravitation grants, the government stimulates excellent research in the Netherlands. The programme is intended for academic consortia that have the potential to be among the very best internationally in their fields. The Gravitation programme provides researchers with the opportunity to carry out innovative and groundbreaking research for a period of 10 years. The selection procedure is carried out by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).
Read more about the Gravitation programme.

The Summit Grant is a funding instrument for scientific collaborations from diverse scientific fields. These research consortia have proven that, in existing collaborations, they belong to the absolute world top or are very close to it and can make the leap to the absolute world top with this instrument.
Read more about the Summit grants.

Designing Hybrid Intelligence

Rineke Verbrugge, Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the UG, is part of the Designing Hybrid Intelligence project, a consortium with five other universities that is developing new theories and methods for intelligent systems that cooperate with humans, adapt to dynamic conditions, and can explain their actions. Verbrugge was a co-applicant for the €19 million Gravitation grant awarded to the project. With the grant, the project team of scientists will be able to effectively stimulate collaboration between the specific qualities of machine intelligence and human intelligence in order to increase joint intelligence.

Social Cohesion: Towards a new fabric of society (SOCION)

The SOCION consortium, in which social sciences and humanities researchers from five different knowledge institutions are conducting research on social cohesion, has been awarded a €30 million Summit Grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). Several UG researchers are involved in this project. Lead applicant Rafael Wittek (Sociology) of the University of Groningen: ‘The very fabric of society is under pressure. Traditional forms of social cohesion are becoming less and less effective. Thanks to the grant, we, together with societal stakeholders, can shed a new light on how social cohesion can be achieved in these challenging times.’

The Summit Grant is intended for research consortia that have proven to be among the world’s absolute best in existing collaborations. According to NWO, the SOCION consortium, which builds on the ongoing SCOOP Gravitation Program (an initiative of the University of Groningen and Utrecht University), has proven its value by developing a methodology for interdisciplinary research in the social sciences and humanities. The interdisciplinary team can now appoint new cohorts of PhDs and Postdocs to successfully continue the project, which allows the researchers to make an important contribution of new knowledge for society.