About the Interuniversity Attraction Poles Programme
Introduction
The “Interuniversity Attraction Poles” (IAP) Programme aims to provide support for teams of excellence in basic research that belong to Belgium’s various (linguistic) Communities. These teams work as part of a network in order to increase their joint contribution to general scientific advances and, where applicable, to international scientific networks.
Since 1987 the IAP progamme has been implemented in five year phases. The ongoing IAP phase-VII (2012-2017) contains 47 networks implicating 369 research teams (257 Belgian teams and 112 International partners) and spans a wide variety of research fields in the life sciences, exact and applied sciences and the human sciences.
The impact of the IAP on basic research is considerable. The programme represents some 500 researchers (full-time-equivalents) paid with IAP funds and over 2 000 publications each year within the programme as a whole.