Researchers at BIRA-IASB are pushing very hard to acquire external funding. Research resources are scarce and competition in calls for R&D projects is fierce. Nevertheless, BIRA-IASB researchers managed to secure a record research budget in 2021-2022. The position of our researchers is thus further strengthened and recognised nationally and internationally.
Since we work with multi-annual projects and related expenses and incomes, it is dangerous to compare the evolution of budgets on an annual basis. Hence, we have chosen to show 4-year running averages, with 4 years being the typical duration of a research project; i.e., 2022 represents here the average income over the period 2019-2022, 2021 the average over period 2018-2021, etc.
The graph distinguishes three large categories of income.
There are two categories of competitively acquired income, namely:
- income through federally funded R&D projects (grey line and symbols)
- income through projects funded by other than federal organisations like ESA, EUMETSAT, EU, ..indicated as ‘external’ (blue line and symbols).
The third category (orange line and symbols) consists of the basic structural funding that we receive annually from the federal government.
It is clear that the total income increases thanks only to the competitively acquired income. The structural base funding has remained essentially identical throughout the last decade corresponding to an effective decrease of the spending power, in (statutory) personnel as well as in functioning and equipment.