Abbreviation TNO Motto Innovation for life | Formation 1932 Number of employees 3,000 Founded 1932 | |
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Purpose applied and contract research Mission TNO connects people and knowledge to create innovations that boost the competitive strength of industry and the well-being of society in a sustainable way. Subsidiaries TNO Beheer B.V., TNO Bedrijven BV | ||
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Toegepast Natuurwetenschappelijk Onderzoek (TNO; English: Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research) is a nonprofit company in the Netherlands that focuses on applied science.
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TNO is a knowledge organisation for companies, government bodies and public organisations. The approximately 3,800 employees work to develop and apply knowledge which makes it the largest research institute in the Netherlands. The organisation also conducts contract research, offers specialist consulting services, and grants licences for patents and specialist software. TNO tests and certifies products and services, and issues an independent evaluation of quality. Moreover, TNO sets up new companies to market innovations.
History
TNO was established by law in 1932 to support companies and governments with innovative, practicable knowledge. As a statutory organisation, TNO has an independent position that allows to give objective, scientifically founded judgments. It is similar to the German Fraunhofer Society and, to a lesser degree, CSIRO in Australia. Furthermore, TNO held also 10% of the Austrian research centre Joanneum Research from 2004 to 2014.
Scope of work
The work of TNO is focused on 5 areas:
In 1994 the TNO Primate Centre in Rijswijk became an independent organisation called the Biomedical Primate Research Centre.
In July 2014 it was announced that TNO would receive $17 million euros of funding from the National Roadmap for large-scale research facilities, awarded by Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).
TNO is part of the consortium that has built the world's first bikepath made from solar panels, known as a "SolaRoad".
Locations
TNO is headquartered in The Hague. Other locations include: Delft, Rijswijk, Leiden, Groningen, Apeldoorn, Helmond, Soesterberg, Utrecht, Den Helder, Zeist, Enschede and Eindhoven. TNO also has two international branch offices in Doha (Qatar) and Aruba. The location Hoofddorp is closed in 2014.
Criticism
In 2006 TNO-ITSEF, a subsidiary organisation of TNO, was criticized for resisting publication of its test reports regarding widely used voting computers in the Netherlands. In the same year a Swiss research group refuted a widely publicized TNO report claiming UMTS radiation is a health hazard. The organisation also received criticism after the evacuation of 200 residents of an Amsterdam housing estate over fears of its structural integrity when the construction had been technically approved by TNO only five months earlier.
Also in 2006 TNO was criticized for their handling of an investigation into the collapse of a balcony in Maastricht in 2003 that killed two people.