The National E-infrastructure for Aging Research (NEAR) has been awarded funding from the Swedish Research Council. The decision was published on 20 September. Now follows a dialogue on the conditions associated with the grants. No later than December 2017, following completion of the dialogues, the special terms and conditions for the grants shall be signed. NEAR is a collaboration between six universities: Karolinska Institutet, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Gothenburg University, Jönköping University, Lund University and Umeå University. ARC wil be the headquarter of NEAR. Professor Laura Fratiglioni, who will be the PI for NEAR, says that:
— I am pleased and honored to build the NEAR infrastructure together with the best Swedish researchers on aging. 
The aim for NEAR is to develop a technical platform for running and coordinating high quality population-based databases in Sweden, to give the researchers access to information in them, and thus to create the prerequisites for future high-quality research.
— The fact that NEAR will be supported by VR as a national infrastructure is an important recognition of the importance of aging research in Sweden. This is also of great importance for ARC since it means that two of its most important databases SNAC-K and SWEOLD will have a more secure future, says professor Johan Fritzell, director at ARC.

NEAR planning meeting. Photo: Maria Yohuang