Industrial Research Fund (Industrieel Onderzoeksfonds)

A special type of government funding gave rise to the Industrial Research Fund (“Industrieel Onderzoeksfonds/IOF”) in 2004. Trying to meet the overall academic demand for a more attractive and flexible research environment and more diverse types of researchers, this fund enables the development of a more devised long-term policy for strategic and applied research programmes at universities.

The flemish universities receive funding according to their output performance, such as the amount of contracts with industry, publications, the share in the European Framework Programme for R&D, the number of patents and spin-offs. 

Up till now, at the VUB the IOF is allocated to so-called 'cores' and 'growers', research units with potential for growth towards excellence. Characteristic for an IOF-core is that the lab clearly exceeds the average scale of a standard university’s research unit. IOF-groups are able to conceive a detailed long-term roadmap and vision and have strongly motivated how the extra IOF funding might contribute to their proprietary valorization strategy.

As from 2011, the IOF means will be allocated to projects for research groups and departments that exceed the average scale of a standard university’s research unit.  Groups applying for IOF-funding will have to be able to conceive an effective valorisation roadmap. The complementary IOF-funded personnel has to be able to realize the roadmap that is put forward. These groups have to prove their existing track-record in valorisation activities, as demonstrated by their revenues from industry/license revenues, patents and spin-offs. These research groups, departments or consortia receive a 3-year funding and are called ‘Group of Expertise in Applied Research (GEAR)'. Two types of GEAR-projects exist:

Level 1: budget of €150.000/year, for 3 years;
Level 2: budget of €75.000/year, for 3 years. 

Find out more about the GEAR-call 2011!

Next to the IOF core research centers and GEAR-projects, IOF is used to finance short-term proof-of-concept projects. 

The coaching and support of mandates and projects financed by the IOF is the responsibility of the Technology Transfer Interface. All legal information about the industrial research fund can be found in the "Besluit van de Vlaamse Regering betreffende de ondersteuning van de Industriële Onderzoeksfondsen en de interfaceactiviteiten van de associaties in de Vlaamse Gemeenschap". Download here  the internal IOF-regulation.