TURBO program and grants

TURBO program and grants

Following the partnership agreement between the University of Twente and Radboud university medical center, in 2017, a new collaborative grant program was launched, named the Twente University Radboudumc Opportunities (TURBO) programme. Annually, the two institutions will jointly supply four TURBO grants of 80K€ each. This pre-seed subsidy aims to support a new joint grant application of a researcher of the University of Twente with a colleague of Radboudumc. The grants can be spent freely with an emphasis on generating sufficient background for the new grant proposal.

Projects bring together health and technology (in the broadest sense). Projects should be innovative and can be fundamental, applied, or implementation science, preferably as they aim to increase Technology Readiness Level (TRL) or Societal Readiness Level (SRL). Higher TRLs or SLRs (TRL or SRL of 5 or above) are preferred.  The focus of the project and the envisioned external grant application should be integrated in a Radboudumc Research Program and on the interface of unmet need conditions, health and/ or medical technologies, building on existing data sources/ infrastructures.

In May 2024, Radboudumc and the University of Twente will enter into a new collaboration agreement.  The TURBO projects should be in line with the ambition to couple the medical unmet need with technology to improve health and healthcare by developing new diagnostic methods and new and improved therapies for diseases that currently cannot be diagnosed or treated well. Opportunities to improve these lie in development and application of new technological methods (e.g. organ-on-a-chip), the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning for the analysis of large amounts of data, technological developments related to e-health, as well as legal, safety, ethical, financial, risk-associated and practical considerations that are key to the implementation of medical technology.

Although TURBO projects could take place in all of these fields, the major aim of the TURBO-assisted grant application should be to get the application a step closer to the market. The projects could concern innovation in Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) with technology (in collaboration with the domain of care & wellbeing).

Please make sure to read the complete Call text.