The I4FUTURE programme engaged 13 international partner universities, 11 private companies and 4 multidisciplinary public sector organisations with 17 University of Oulu research groups. The programme brought together the complementary and supplementary expertise of internationally accredited researchers with the aim of training young researchers in an interdisciplinary manner in highly relevant socio-economic research areas using state-of-the-art techniques.
I4FUTURE built upon a critical mass of interdisciplinary, inter-sectoral and international expertise and provided a unique combination of complementary methodological approaches for high-quality training that would not be possible to implement at any site or organisation alone.
The I4Future programme built on exploiting the novel imaging and characterisation methods beyond the traditional barriers of research. The interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral programme combined internationally recognised excellence in science and availability of state-of-the-art infrastructures to provide unique doctoral training driven by inter-sectoral collaboration.
The research groups and supervisors of the programme had their backgrounds in the fields of environmental sciences, bio-economy, engineering and material sciences, as well as in medicine and biosciences. The adoption of the power of modern imaging and characterisation methods in multi-sectoral manner was at the heart of the programme and opened up a new window on the properties of materials, industrial and biological processes, medical treatments and physical phenomena affecting everyday life. This collaboration resulted, in addition of new scientific findings, new multidisciplinary research openings within the university, and with the new partner organisations. The collaboration and the results were disseminated and highlighted during the international ICFUTURE2020 -conference, that brought together about 100 participants around the World. The working in the borders of different scientific disciplines opens possibilities for new breakthrough discoveries also after the end of the programme.
We expect the I4FUTURE to have significant impact on the science in the fields involved and the practical application of scientific information to create innovations and improve the environment and human health also in future. The ESRs’ graduated from the I4FUTURE are highly skilled doctors who are able to see the practical significance of their scientific work and have skills to push the scientific results to practical innovations. 11/20 ESRs graduated by the end of the year 2021, and in 9 cases the expected time of graduation is in year 2022. About a half of the ESRs foresee their future career within an industry, or in research with close connection to industrial applications. In addition to increased competence in research methods, such as imaging and characterisation, the ESRs evaluated gaining important experiences in multidisciplinary networking, communication, resilience, independent research work, collaboration and critical thinking. As a result of the programme, the working conditions perspectives of ESRs were enhanced alongside with the career perspectives. The programme gave the ESRs a good opportunity to consider their own roles in the innovation and value chain and make informed decisions on future prospects in academia, industry or the public sector, or in business world leading their own start-up companies.
