Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials example to other top institutes

An international NWO committee has given the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials of the University of Groningen and the Netherlands Research School for Astronomy NOVA a slightly better assessment than the four other top research schools in the Netherlands, which are also extraordinarily high in quality. Both the Zernike Institute and NOVA were awarded the predicate exemplary by the committee, whereas the others were labelled excellent.

Earlier this year, the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials also scored well on the Times Higher Education Ranking – according to this ranking list published in March, the Groningen top research school is one of the ten best institutes in the field of materials research in the world, trumping prestigious universities such as Princeton, Stanford and Cambridge, as well as the Max Planck Institute.

The international NWO committee assessed the Dutch top research schools this summer in the framework of an evaluation of the ‘Dieptestrategie’, the only type of NWO grant that supports entire scientific institutes – all other grant types focus on individual researchers of projects.

Institutes such as the Zernike Institute and NOVA prove that the ‘Dieptestrategie’ does indeed enable Dutch research institutes to attain high positions in global rankings, which is why the University of Groningen favours a strong continuation of the ‘Dieptestrategie’ for institutes. According to the University, utilizing this grant form for smaller research units or clusters of researchers would lead to fragmentation and thus lesser results at an international level.