It was the big promise this government made to science. Four hundred million euros are added: two hundred for fundamental research and two hundred for applied research. Out of this amount, 250 million will be funded by the Minister of Education, Culture and Science, Ingrid van Engelshoven.

On Friday afternoon March 9 Van Engelshoven informed the Lower House what she intends to spend the money on. The technical universities have been lobbying for extra funds for many years and now they are getting them. As of 2020 they will get seventy million euros extra for their technological research and programs. They will be required to make ‘sector plans’, though. The TU/e Executive Board announces that it cannot present a really substantive response to this government policy yet until the concrete division of resources within those sector plans is known. “At this moment all we know is that seventy million extra will be made available to the four TUs as of 2020”, says Executive Board officer Barend Pelgrim.

Supercomputers

The government also wants to release extra funds for supercomputers and the ‘digital infrastructure’: twenty million per year. That would help in research by means of big data and make it easier to get the cybersecurity in order.

Initial reactions are trickling in. Science companion KNAW is satisfied: “The extra resources are a good step towards the reinforcement of scientific research, so that the Netherlands can prolong its position internationally.”

Association of Universities VSNU speaks of a very fine first step. “We are setting to work with this at once, but in the long term more investments will naturally be required in view of international developments”, says chairman Pieter Duisenberg. In November 2017 Duisenberg paid a visit to TU/e, where he had a meeting with the University Council in which he also insisted on the importance of technology and science.