Typically, researchers, research institutions or funding organizations decide on the agenda that research should pursue. But when it comes to addressing the needs of the general public as key stakeholder, these agendas often exhibit blind spots. Key for addressing these blind spots and ultimately increasing the impact of science in the long run is to meaningfully involve those directly affected in jointly setting research priorities.

The Priority Setting program helps identify, prioritize, and achieve consensus on research efforts important to stakeholders. Specifically, the unit supports the  design of priority setting exercises throughout the different research stages (What needs to be prioritized?), it facilitates granularity assessment (How detailed do research priorities need to be?), it provides project guidance and mentoring (How does priority setting need to be designed?), and it assists in institutionalized project steering (How can priorities be sustainably integrated within research environments?). An international advisory group ensures a high quality of the conducted priority setting projects and implemented methods.

Collaboratively setting research priorities helps detecting blind spots in science. Research areas, topics, or questions of common relevance can be identified and will be injected into the scientific discourse throughout the research cycle. By including all relevant stakeholders in setting research priorities, research waste can be reduced, and science and society can be brought closer together.