As per 2017 – the first year of Nikhef’s most recent strategic plan- the financial facts and figures also include large investments, such as grants from the National Roadmap for Large Research Infrastructures. In the 2012 – 2021 graph the largest part of the increase from 2016 to 2017 is attributable to this change in reporting.
The 2021 funding level of the Nikhef partnership is higher than ever: 49,8 M€ (cf. 47,8 M€ in 2020). As explained last year the growth is largely due to a considerably higher share attributed to the university partners, which is now about a third of the total. This large share is explained by new partners (Groningen in 2016, Maastricht in 2019), who have joined the partnership and an increasing number of projects (in particular some large investments, such as for ETpathfinder and Virgo), that are managed administratively by the university partners.
The expenses for accelerator-based particle physics (ATLAS, LHCb and ALICE) together comprise 26% of the direct expenses. Astroparticle physics activities, for which construction activities are considerable, in particular in Gravitational Waves physics (ET pathfinder and Virgo) and Neutrino physics (KM3NeT), make out 42% of direct expenses. The eEDM program line (Groningen) is 3% of direct expenses.
The enabling activities (computing, detector R&D and particularly Theory) comprise 18% of expenses, whilst industrial, outreach and datacenter activities make out the remainder (11%) of the direct costs.
