To unravel the complexity of the brain and its diseases, our research needs to cross artificial borders between traditional academic disciplines. The aim of the expertise unit is to lower the practical and administrative barriers to collaborative, transdisciplinary research.
The expertise unit helps all researchers at the Center for Brain & Disease Research to build collaborations and partnerships, interact with new local and international partners, access or develop innovative technologies, design ambitious scientific plans and obtain funding to conduct their research.
Expertise
Consultancy for collaborative research projects
The expertise unit assists group leaders with identifying potential academic and industrial partners, building consortia with these partners and other stakeholders such as patient associations or lobbying groups, organizing meetings and workshops, selecting the appropriate funding channel for their collaborative projects, and writing compelling research proposals.
Research management
The expertise unit works together with VIB’s IT unit to develop tailored, integrated tools that support research project management. An online form allowing researchers to develop a full Data Management Plan (DMP) for their projects is already available.
Contact
How we work
Contact us as early as possible when designing your project to get assistance with proposal preparation and finding the most suited funding opportunity.
Information about upcoming calls is regularly distributed via different newsletters. Funding options can also be searched
=> using the “GeDOCumenteerd” portal from KU Leuven
=> or VIB's grants tool
Data management plan
An online DMP tool is available to all VIB researchers and provides guidance to complete a DMP for their project, which can be directly exported in the right format for the FWO or the ERC.
Workshops
In 2019, the Expertise Unit co-organized 3 thematic workshops for Mision Lucidity and the UK Dementia Research Institute, focusing on ‘Neurotechnology for dementia’ (UK), ‘Amyloid transmissibility’ (UK) and ‘Sleep disturbances in neurodegenerative diseases’ (Leuven). Several collaborative research projects have been initiated during these workshops, and a joint whitepaper on the transmissibility of amyloid seeds has been published in the Lancet Neurology in October 2020.