The National Foundation for Science and Technology Development is offering grants to social sciences and humanities research projects, recently selected in the first funding term. In order to bring scientists closer to funding opportunities and clarify the regulations of the Foundation’s operation, NAFOSTED organized a conference entitled: “Presentation of the funding programs and instruction on the use of funds and expense settlement” on April 9, 2011 at the Vietnam’s Institute of Social Sciences, with the presence of almost 100 researchers of social sciences, project leaders and leading organizations’ representatives of NAFOSTED’s funded projects.

To start the conference, Mr. Phan Hong Son, the Foundation’s Executive Director, presented the funding programs in basic research of natural science, social sciences and humanities, international cooperation, enterprise support of Decree 119 and research support activities, such as: internship abroad, publication fees and participation in international conferences/workshops. Mrs. Do Phuong Lan, the Deputy Executive Director in charge of finance, talked about the procedure of preparing the budget plan, gave instructions on how to use funds and settle project expenditure and answered questions of the participants about special issues when signing the contract of the project and expense settlement. The participants actively discussed and were highly interested by the subjects presented; the Foundation’s directors also gave detailed answer to other questions.

As requested by the project leaders, the Foundation distributes some recommended forms for actual project deployment: