Folmer Bokma scientific coordinator at VSI

Folmer Bokma has been appointed as scientific coordinator at the VSI on February 1st, 2021. He will help researchers acquire external funding, and assist the leadership of the institute with the development and implementation of funding strategies. He has studied and worked at the University of Groningen before, but spent most of the past 20 years in Scandinavia, working as researcher as well as with research support.

His experience as researcher includes several successful and even more unsuccessful grant applications, as ad-hoc reviewer of research proposals for a.o. ERC and NSF, and as panel member. As research coordinator, he has helped researchers at various career stages and from a wide variety of scientific disciplines with applications to national and international funding agencies. He came to VSI from Umeå University in Sweden, where he analyzed external funding and research output to provide strategic advice to the university’s senior management.

Folmer obtained his MSc and in 2004 also his PhD in ecology at the University of Oulu in Finland. He has worked at the university of Umeå in Sweden since 2005, where he became associate professor in evolutionary biology in 2011. Since 2018 he has also worked as researcher at the University of Oslo, Norway. At Umeå University he has worked as research coordinator since 2017, but he has also given invited grant writing workshops in Oslo and Trondheim.