Vidi grant awarded to over 100 researchers and scientists

A total of 109 Dutch researchers will receive a financial subsidy from the government, also known as the Vidi grant. They will all receive fees of up to 850,000 euros, the Dutch Research Council (NWO) announced on Thursday. This is a decrease compared to last year, when 149 Vidi grants were approved.

Loes Aaldering of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU) has been awarded a grant to research "political sexism among young people." Her work includes studying the manosphere, an online subculture that views women as inferior. Criminologist Elaine Rodermond, also from the VU, will study the development of violent extremism amongst young people and has received a grant for this.

Rintje Agricola, an orthopedic surgeon at the Erasmus MC hospital in Rotterdam, wants to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to detect early stages of osteoarthritis before patients get severe and unfixable complaints.

Matthijs Cluitmans of Maastricht UMC+ hospital wants to use AI to predict which patients have a heightened risk of a sudden fatal heart failure. Tommaso Ristori of TU Eindhoven wants to study how the heart can recover after an acute heart attack.

The Vidi grant is meant for researchers who have a few years of experience. The NWO has two more funds for research. In July, the organization announced that 205 recently promoted researchers would receive the Vidi grant. They will receive up to 320,000 euros.

It was reported in February that 39 highly qualified scientists had received the highest possible subsidy, called Vici. This provides 1.5 million euros for each project. The names are derived from Julius Caesar’s famous phrase “Veni, vidi, vici,” which is Latin for “I came, I saw, I conquered.”