FNR Foresight

The FNR Foresight is a project undertaken by the Luxembourg Fonds national de la recherche (FNR) in 2006 to 2007.

The Foresight Exercise aimed at identifying national research priorities in the public sector with socio-economic interest for Luxembourg society. It was based on a close involvement of stakeholders from the research community, society, and the economy of Luxembourg as well as a number of international experts.

The Foresight Exercise was not designed as a "winner takes all" competition between research domains - all research domains currently investigated in Luxembourg will continue to receive at least the present level of financial support. Nonetheless, especially in a small country with very limited human and financial resources, prioritization is essential. For only through prioritization can resources be sufficiently focused to enable internationally competitive cutting-edge research.

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Recent news

Publication of Foresight Final Report

The Foresight Final report is now available for download .

The Foresight report presents a detailed account of the results of the discussions and analysis conducted in the frame of the exercise. The report was formally discussed and approved by the Board of Administrators and the Scientific Council of the FNR and was presented to the Minister and the State Secretary of Culture, Higher Education, and Research on the 18th of June 2007.

Next steps:

The report will be presented in a publicly held conference in November.

The intentions of the Ministry of Culture, Higher Education, and Research is to use the FNR advice as a basis for its decisions on the funding for the future research directions and the governance of the research centres (through performance contracts etc). The Ministry will accompany the decision making process with consultation of various other Ministries.

Published on Monday, June 25 (4870 reads | Score: : 3.66)

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Launch event and Stakeholder meeting

The FNR will hold the Launch Event presenting the results obtained during phase I of the Foresight exercise and to give details on the objectives and various steps of phase II on Monday 16th of October 2006, 16:00 at the Chamber of Commerce (room C2), 7 rue Alcide de Gaspéri, in Luxembourg-Kirchberg. Everyone is welcome to attend the event.
(The Report and the presentations of the event are now available in the Publications section of this site)

Published on Thursday, October 12 (4769 reads | Score: : 0)

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July Update

The 1st phase of the FNR Foresight is coming to an end and we are very pleased with the results and looking forward to the 2nd phase.

Thus, during the Exploratory Workshop on 19 May 2006, 120 Luxembourg researchers discussed various scenarios for the future orientation of Luxembourg research and FNR research programmes. The six following fields of research were identified as interesting for Luxembourg: ICT; Physical Sciences and Engineering; Life Sciences; Environmental Sciences; Economy, Law and Finance; and Social Sciences and Humanities.

Published on Thursday, July 06 (4699 reads | Score: : 3.25)

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Mai update

Since our last newsletter in March, a lot has been going on in the Foresight exercise!

The Young Researchers Workshops took place on 7th and 8th of March with around 100 young scientists from Luxembourg and abroad discussing future research priorities for Luxembourg. It was quite interesting to see that the response of the young researchers was in fact ambivalent: it was the first time that their opinion on research priorities was asked and although they seemed happy about this they also felt uncomfortable with this task. Additionally, a lot of constraints of the current Luxembourg research environment – going well beyond mere research priorities – were discussed. The general feeling was that a Foresight culture needs to be installed in Luxembourg to keep the dialogue ongoing between all the actors involved in research matters.

Published on Tuesday, May 02 (4875 reads | Score: : 4)

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The Questionnaire is online

The FNR has now published the online questionnaire related to the Foresight exercise.
The general purpose of the questionnaire is to collect your ideas for future research axes in the public sector, identify objectives and targets of public sector research and assess support instruments to support the future research priorities.

Published on Thursday, March 30 (5967 reads | Score: : 3)

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