Alexander Sack receives a Vici grant from the NWO
The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) announced today that 32 researchers have each received a €1.5 million Vici grant. They can use these funds over the next five years to conduct research and build up their own research groups. Alexander Sack (Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience) received one of these prestigious grants for his research into brain stimulation.
Alexander Sack, professor of Functional Brain Stimulation and Neurocognitive Psychology, received the Vici grant for his research entitled Stimulating! Cognitive improvement through brain stimulation. Attention and memory are vital cognitive skills, which are unfortunately disrupted in many people after a stroke or in the case of a psychopathological disorder. In this research we will link information about individual brain networks and brainwaves, to realise new techniques of brain stimulation. With this brain stimulation we will try to improve human cognition.
The Vici is one of the largest individual research grants in the Netherlands and is part of the NWO’s Innovational Research Incentives Scheme (‘Vernieuwingsimpuls’). For the 2015 round, 215 researchers submitted pre-proposals and 122 applicants submitted full proposals. Of those, 32 were granted, which amounts to an award rate of about 15 percent.
The Vici is part of the NWO’s Innovational Research Incentives Scheme, which consists of the Veni, Vidi and Vici. Through this scheme, the NWO offers researchers in different stages of their careers the opportunity to do groundbreaking research. The Innovational Research Incentives Scheme is intended to stimulate academic talent. It offers a boost for the Vici researchers and simultaneously creates space for a large number of young researchers to work in their research groups.
In previous years, Alexander Sack has acquired an NWO Veni- (2003) and Vidi-grant (2006). In 2010, he also received an ERC Consolidator Grant.
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