The executive office of the Top Sector LSH has welcomed two new colleagues in their team. And the Evaluation Committee also has a new member to help them assess new project applications. Read a brief introduction to each of the new Health~Holland colleagues.

I graduated in Innovation Sciences, with a specialisation in the Life Sciences, at Utrecht University. After graduating I became a subsidy (non-dilutive funding) consultant at Catalyze, which I did for two years. My motivation for choosing a job in the life sciences is to try to make a difference in patients' lives. In addition, I enjoy the challenge of understanding the complexities of healthcare and life science product development and implementation. My ambition within my current role is to enable organisations to help start-ups in understanding this field and to reduce the time needed for innovations to be effectively implemented.

NWO will ensure increased coordination in Dutch science so that a national research strategy can be developed, including a regularly updated Dutch National Research Agenda. In this, thematic and curiosity-driven research will be kept in balance. NWO will facilitate self-organisation in the scientific field and will also clearly involve societal parties and citizens in the programming and realisation of research. NWO will continue to proactively seek the connection with international, and especially European, science policy. NWO will make an active contribution to Science Diplomacy.

Good research requires good researchers. NWO will ensure that researchers in the Netherlands can continue to develop in all phases of their career. The renowned Talent Scheme (Rubicon, Veni, Vidi, Vici) will be supplemented with instruments that will enable talented researchers to continue working on existing research with a longer duration, whether alone or with a team. Furthermore, the NWO Open Competition for curiosity-driven research will be given a modular structure.

NWO will expand the 'Money Follows Researcher' scheme and it will establish the Huygens Professorship to attract excellent senior scientists to the Netherlands. NWO will also tackle important bottlenecks such as the Matthew effect and the high application pressure.

Fundamental research forms the basis for excellence and innovation. Consequently, curiosity-driven and fundamental research will remain an important focus for NWO with programmes for high-risk pioneering research. NWO will place an even greater emphasis than in the past on team science and collaboration across the breadth of science with opportunities for a broad knowledge chain approach in which fundamental, strategic, practice-oriented and applied research will be connected with each other. Non-scientific parties will also have the opportunity to be involved in realising research in these programmes.

The NWO institutes fulfil a national role as centres for collaboration for strategically important subjects. Open Science will remain the norm in all of these initiatives.

Research infrastructure plays an important role in all areas of science. In this regard, not just the 'hard' equipment and ICT facilities are important but also the technical support and a professional environment where brainpower is concentrated and people meet NWO believes it has an important task in funding large-scale research facilities and making these available to Dutch researchers. The NWO institutes continue to play a major role as the host or point of entry to large national and international research infrastructure. Furthermore, NWO wants to draw up a national investment agenda together with universities and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.