Funding & Expenses
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 2014 – 2023 graph the largest part of the increase from 2016 to 2017 is attributable to this change in reporting.
The 2023 funding level of the Nikhef partnership is comparable with the previous year: 50,3 M€ (cf. 49,3 M€ in 2022). The universities make out about 34% of the total. This large share is explained by new partners (Groningen in 2016, Maastricht in 2019), who have joined the partnership, an increased number of staff at each partner (funded by scheme as ‘sectorplannen’) 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) and eEDM together comprise 25% of the direct expenses. Astroparticle physics activities, for which construction activities are considerable, in particular in Gravitational Waves physics (ET pathfinder) and Neutrino physics (KM3NeT), make out 34% of direct expenses.
The enabling activities (computing, detector R&D and particularly Theory) comprise 22% of expenses, whilst the miscellaneous activities (such ET Growth Fund and outreach) and Datacenter activities make out the remainder (19%) of the direct costs.
