III. Budget, Income/Expenditure Plan and Financial Plan
1. Improvement of Financial Conditions
(1) Status of granted external funds
The amount of external funds acquired in FY2010 is shown in Table 9. It has increased by 35,419,697 yen (42.3%) from the previous year.
Table 9: Acquired amount of external funds (Unit: Yen)
| - | FY2010 | FY2009 |
|---|---|---|
| Competitive Research Grants | 68,281,464 | 59,085,142 |
| Funded Research | 42,751,000 | 16,200,000 |
| Joint Research | 8,000,000 | 8,357,625 |
| Donation | 30,000 | 0 |
| Total | 119,062,464 | 83,642,767 |
(2) Measures for obtaining external funds
In order to further enhance the acquisition of research grants, research grant information was distributed to researchers through e-mails, etc., and for information of foreign research grants, an online research grant database (Community of Science) was introduced in FY2010. This enhanced the efficiency for the researchers in applying for various grants available abroad. In addition, the status of granted research funds was reported in the monthly Managers Committee, and submission of applications was encouraged. As a result, the number of applications increased largely from the previous year, including applications from non-Japanese researchers.
Table 10: Number of Applications for Competitive Funds
|
FY2009 |
32 (Including 5 applications from Non-Japanese) |
|
FY2010 |
81 (Including 23 applications from Non-Japanese) |
In October 2010, an international symposium and workshop on the development of an R&D cluster in Okinawa were held with the participation of entrepreneurs, etc. from Japan and abroad. In the workshop, two PIs of OIST each made a presentation on technology development and their research plan, and received comments from participants. In addition, lectures on technology transfer and foreign patents were held in February 2011 by inviting external experts as lecturers to raise the awareness of researchers.