Supported projects

BRUSSELS - A maze of European subsidy rules has created a lucrative niche: grant consultants. These consultancy firms earn substantial sums by assisting researchers with their subsidy applications. This raises a fundamental question: does current research policy steer science too much towards competition and market value, at the expense of an open, societal approach to research?

AFRICA - New generations always dream big. Daaf Borren travelled through some 16 countries in Africa, fascinated by their stories. From Mali and Congo to Ethiopia and Mauritania: this is an atypical travel book, in which you not only cover many kilometres, but also travel along to the future.

BRUSSELS - Our meat consumption must go down, and to facilitate this, an army of producers is ready with alternatives. Some found inspiration in age-old recipes, others are reinventing meat altogether.

COLOMBO - A Sri Lankan scientist, also a young mother, is trying to map the patterns of migrating coral larvae to protect the future of coral reefs and her people.

GALWAY/NUUK/REYKJAVIK - For months now, the North Atlantic has been plagued by extreme heat waves. The new high-tech research vessel the Belgica is sailing to the polar regions for the first time to document and investigate the effects of climate change in the oceans. Journalists Arno Van Rensbergen and Johannes De Bruycker went on board for a week.

COPENHAGEN - By 2050, the earth will have 10 billion inhabitants. At the same time, the area of available agricultural land per person is shrinking. As climate disrupts, classical farming systems are colliding with their limits.

BRUSSELS - Animal protein production accounts for 82% of food’s carbon footprint in the EU, and it is therefore necessary to curb livestock emissions in order to reach the goals within the EU green deal.

BRUSSELS - Today, plastics are everywhere. Metres deep on the seabed in the Mariana Trench. At the top of Mont Blanc. At the North Pole. In your blood.

BRUSSELS - We consume one phone every two to three years on average. That’s not good for the environment nor for the climate. In Europe more than two hundred million smartphones are being sold annually. This market is highly dominated by Apple, Samsung and Huawei. So they determine the level of durability for those devices, and how easy it is to repair them. On one hand our phones often die very fast and we don’t get it fixed, on the other hand the consumer is being seduced by the latest technological advancements. The repair industry could play an important role for our smartphone and could on top create local jobs. Problems that require fixing are most often a broken screen or battery. If we systematically repair those problems we immediately increase the lifetime of those devices and all of the resources they hold. The article investigates where the key problems are, what the government should do about it and what we as consumers can do to help.

The Emperor of OTRAG is a non-fiction story that tries to find out what forces led to the creation and demise of the first private space company and takes the reader from old West Germany to Mobutu's Zaire, Gaddafi's Libya, the Mojave Desert in California and an island in the Pacific where Lutz Kayser spent the last 10 years of his life. It raises the question of how far someone wants to go to make his dream come true.

BRUSSELS - The deep, blue oceans are home to an unprecedented wealth of biodiversity, as well as the planet's last unexploited resources. The race to the ocean floor is in full swing and Belgium is in the leading group.

BRUSSELS - Belgians are top in sorting out garbage. But what happens to the PET bottles we throw in the blue bag? Exactly how many PET bottles do we recycle? And does recycling really reduces fossil plastic production?

ANTWERP - 5G promises to become the infrastructure of the future. For example, the new, fifth generation of mobile internet would be up to one hundred times faster than 4G, and will provide a platform on which new technology is built. The most innovative things, from remote operations to autonomous vehicles, will become possible via 5G. But our mobile internet is also increasingly becoming a critical infrastructure around which many conflicts are emerging. Today, we fear that the Chinese are bugging us with 5G, that its radiation is giving us cancer, that 5G is being rolled out too slowly in our country and even that it will cause our companies to close down.

BRUSSELS - When is the use of a subsidy for an independent entrepreneur justified and when is there abuse? Sofie Van Nuffel came across statements that suggest that not everything can be guaranteed by trust alone. 

BELGIUM - The share of the pharmaceutical sector in the Belgian economy is large. According to the organization pharma.be in 2017, the sector employed 35,711 people and our country exported for a total value of 40.5 billion euros of medicines and vaccines worldwide, which is about 10% of Belgian exports. 

BRUSSELS - A six-part documentary series behind the scenes of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences.

BEIJING - In 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping decided it was time to 'go out'. He launched the One Belt One Road (OBOR) project and wants to develop a train connection across the Eurasian continent and a maritime route into Europe.

BRUSSELS - Disposable nappies are largely petroleum-based products and crammed ones create a huge pile of waste. But they are handy. What can environmentally conscious parents do? Eos Magazine knocked on the door of all the major manufacturers and found out who has the most sustainable disposable nappy.

HANOI - Last year's publication of a scientific paper announcing Dutch virologist Ron Fouchier had succeeded in growing an airborne avian influenza virus in his lab in Rotterdam caused a big stir. Though inherently risky, such research was necessary, he argued, because it would teach us which naturally occuring viruses to look out for.

DESSEL - It is likely that the Belgian government will give the green light for the final underground disposal of nuclear waste before the end of the year. Cost: several billion euros. The taxpayer pays almost half of that. It remains to be seen whether the largest waste producer Electrabel will pay the rest.

BRUSSELS - One in twelve medical scientists in Flanders admits to fabricating or manipulating data to make it match a hypothesis. Almost six in twelve say they have witnessed such fraudulent practices. They identify high publication pressure as one of the causes.

BRUSSELS - Antibiotics have long been a sort of wonder drug that allowed for a significant decrease in mortality from all kinds of infectious diseases. But there is one disadvantage to antibiotics: bacteria develop a resitance for them. In The End of Antibiotics journalist Rinke van den Brink puts these imperceptible bruisers under the microscope. He speaks with scores of international specialists and asks them for possible solutions, because antibiotic resistance is a worldwide problem.

BELGIUM - Scientists conduct research on behalf of government and industry. Companies finance chairs and universities derive income from patents on research results. The three-part series 'University for Sale?' examines the relationship between science, government and industry.

BRUSSELS - Can we expect pill manufacturers to provide objective information? This is the first in a series of articles on the influence of the pharmaceutical industry in Europe.