The Hylleraas Centre (and its predecessor, The Centre for Theoretical and Computational Chemistry) has been part of the evaluation of the Norwegian Centre of Excellence funding program. The international panel that conducted the evaluation concludes that the program has been a resounding success.
Despite the fact that the direct CoE funding only accounts for about 4% of the annual budget of the Research Council of Norway, the CoEs account for 30% of the Norwegian papers among the top 1% cited papers and 45% of all Norwegian ERC grant winners have been affiliated with one of the Norwegian CoEs. The Hylleraas centre and the CTCC has contributed to these numbers, with for instance 3 of the 4 ERC Norwegian ERC grants in chemistry (and the fourth grant holder our new chairman of the board).
"We are grateful to the Research Council for Norway for the opportunities that its CoE scheme have given us since 2007, first with the Centre for Theoretical and Computational Chemistry (2007–2017) and now the Hylleraas Centre (2017–)", says Hylleraas director, Prof. Trygve Helgaker. "These centres have made it possible to think long term and to build strong research environments in theoretical chemistry, whose activities and influence extend far beyond those of the original groups. In fact, I could never have foreseen this development 15 years ago and feel privileged and proud to be part of this important initiative of the Research Council of Norway."
To read the full report and the recommendations of the international evaluation panel, please follow this link.