DZNE Research Institute

Challenge:
To find funding to support dementia research
Deutsches Zentrum für Neurodegenerative Erkrankungen (DZNE) is the only research institute in Germany dedicated to dementia and all its facets. As a Helmholtz Association member and the first of six German centres for health research (DZG).

DZNE is a respected research institute with a clear research focus. There are currently over 1.5 million people living with dementia in Germany, two-thirds of which have Alzheimer’s disease. Also, nearly 300,000 new patients are diagnosed every year. Its workforce includes over 900 employees in more than 70 research groups, all investigating the similarities and differences of various neurodegenerative diseases. Its aim – to develop new preventive, diagnostic, and therapeutic approaches.

Solution:
Identifying a rich source of international funding opportunities
Katrin Bürger, Officer for Third Party Funding at DZNE said “Funding is a key part of the institute – especially securing additional external funding to support the important work that it does. It is essential that our source of funding information is comprehensive and easy to access. ResearchConnect funding solution from Idox meets our needs as it contains thousands of research funding opportunities from a breadth of funders. The content is always accurate and as the service is updated in real time, we’re confident that we will never miss a funding opportunity of relevance to our research.”

“ResearchConnect helps us stay informed about funding not only from national and EU sources, but opportunities beyond the continent. This helps us tap into different funding pots and seek international collaboration. The combination of content and functionality makes ResearchConnect a powerful tool, allowing us to be proactive in sourcing and securing external funding.”

Outcome:
ResearchConnect has identified many new funding opportunities
Researchers across the institute receive monthly news on funding opportunities identified with ResearchConnect, including the latest information on open calls. The service is also used for responding to special funding requests from DZNE scientists such as identifying doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships, travel grants and so on. Katrin adds “Colleagues from many of our departments and teams have commented on how valuable this information is and how intuitive and easy to use they find the system. Having so many funding opportunities available in one database that can be easily searched saves precious time and resource. We are particularly impressed with how the service has highlighted applicable funding opportunities from ‘unknown’ funding institutions that we might otherwise have missed, including a number of European and global programmes. This has greatly enhanced our ability to support the work of DZNE. Implementing ResearchConnect was quick and easy for our institute and we believe that it is an invaluable and cost effective way of identifying research funding.”