BRIN — Badan Riset dan Inovasi Nasional, the National Research and Innovation Agency — is Indonesia’s central government body for research and innovation. It is unusual among the national funding agencies covered elsewhere in this cluster because it is not primarily a grant-making body that sits above independent institutes and universities. BRIN is both a funder and, since 2021, the direct operator of most of the country’s former national research institutes, having absorbed their staff, laboratories, and functions into a single agency. For a research administrator or international collaborator, understanding BRIN means understanding both roles at once, not just its grant programs.
What BRIN is
BRIN is a non-ministerial government agency (Lembaga Pemerintah Non Kementerian) that reports directly to the President of Indonesia rather than to a line ministry such as the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology. Its legal foundation is Law No. 11 of 2019 on the National System of Science and Technology (Sistem Nasional Ilmu Pengetahuan dan Teknologi, or Sisnas Iptek), which set out a mandate to consolidate Indonesia’s previously fragmented science and technology governance under a single national body. BRIN was formally established and operationalized through Presidential Regulation (Peraturan Presiden) No. 33 of 2021, signed on 28 April 2021.
The practical effect is that BRIN now functions simultaneously as: a national science and technology policy coordinator; a direct employer of the great majority of Indonesia’s civil-servant researchers; an operator of national research infrastructure and laboratories; and a competitive research-funding body for researchers both inside and outside the agency. That combination — funder plus research-performing institute under one roof — is the single most important thing to understand about BRIN before working with it.
How BRIN was formed: the 2021 consolidation
Presidential Regulation No. 33/2021 merged four previously independent national research and technology agencies into BRIN:
- LIPI — Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia (Indonesian Institute of Sciences), the country’s main basic-science research body
- BPPT — Badan Pengkajian dan Penerapan Teknologi (Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology), focused on applied and engineering research
- BATAN — Badan Tenaga Nuklir Nasional (National Nuclear Energy Agency)
- LAPAN — Lembaga Penerbangan dan Antariksa Nasional (National Institute of Aeronautics and Space)
The Presidential Regulation set a transition window of up to two years for the four agencies’ tasks, staff, budgets, and assets to be fully integrated into BRIN, with the government targeting consolidation of the core structures by 1 January 2022. Beyond the four founding agencies, dozens of research and development units embedded inside other ministries and government bodies were also transferred into BRIN over the following months — reporting at the time put the number at roughly 44 separate R&D units. This included research-functional civil servants who had previously worked inside ministries and, controversially for some, researchers based at state universities’ government-affiliated research units, who were required to formally transfer their employment into BRIN’s own researcher career track rather than remaining institutionally attached to their universities.
The result is that BRIN did not simply gain a new funding budget in 2021 — it absorbed an entire pre-existing national research workforce and physical infrastructure (laboratories, observatories, nuclear facilities, aerospace test sites, and more) built up over decades by the four legacy agencies. Some reporting from the time cited an initial annual state budget allocation to BRIN in the tens of trillions of rupiah, reflecting the scale of what was folded into a single institution.
BRIN’s dual role: funder and research-performing institute
This dual structure is not unique in world research governance, but it is different from the model most researchers assume when they hear “national research agency.” Two useful comparisons:
- Agencies like the US National Science Foundation, the UK’s UKRI councils, or India’s Department of Science and Technology are primarily funders: they award competitive grants to researchers based at universities and other institutions, but they do not themselves employ the bulk of the country’s researchers or run the laboratories where the funded work happens.
- France’s CNRS is the closer parallel: a large research-performing operator that directly employs its own researcher workforce and runs its own laboratories (many jointly with universities), while also administering funding instruments. BRIN’s structure resembles this “operator” model, but at a larger relative scale within its national system — because BRIN absorbed essentially all of the country’s non-university public research capacity into one agency, rather than being one research operator among several.
For a research administrator, the practical implication is that “working with BRIN” can mean very different things depending on context: applying to a BRIN-administered competitive grant as an external applicant, negotiating a collaboration where BRIN researchers and BRIN facilities are direct project partners, or navigating BRIN’s role as the national permitting authority for foreign research activity in Indonesia (covered below). These are three distinct relationships with the same agency, and conflating them is a common source of confusion for institutions engaging with Indonesia for the first time.
How BRIN funds research
BRIN’s principal competitive funding instrument is RIIM — Riset dan Inovasi untuk Indonesia Maju (“Research and Innovation for an Advanced Indonesia”). RIIM is explicitly designed to be open beyond BRIN’s own internal researchers: eligible applicants include Indonesian citizen researchers based at research institutions, universities (Perguruan Tinggi), business entities, and community organizations, applying under BRIN-published call guidelines and eligibility rules that vary by competition round. RIIM funds projects intended to generate scientific and technological novelty with realistic potential for downstream development and application by industry or government stakeholders, rather than functioning purely as a curiosity-driven basic-research fund.
Alongside domestic RIIM competitions, BRIN runs an RIIM International Collaboration co-funding track that pairs Indonesian research teams with partner-country funding agencies under bilateral or multilateral arrangements — reported partner mechanisms have included joint calls coordinated with counterpart agencies in Japan, China, and Malaysia, as well as participation in the e-ASIA Joint Research Program, a multilateral East Asian research-funding consortium. In a co-funded call, BRIN typically funds the Indonesian side of a collaborative project while the partner-country agency funds its own nationals’ participation under parallel national rules — the standard co-funding structure used across most bilateral research programs internationally.
BRIN also sets and coordinates Indonesia’s National Research Priorities (Prioritas Riset Nasional, PRN), a periodically updated set of thematic priority areas that shapes how competitive funding calls, including RIIM rounds, are structured and weighted across disciplines.
International collaboration and researcher mobility
Beyond co-funded grant competitions, BRIN operates researcher mobility schemes intended to connect foreign researchers directly with BRIN’s own research groups and facilities, including arrangements described as Joint Research Visits, Visiting Professor placements, and postdoctoral collaborations hosted within BRIN research units. These mobility routes are separate from RIIM funding competitions — they are about physically embedding a foreign researcher within a BRIN group for a defined period, using BRIN’s own facilities and researcher counterparts, rather than co-funding an externally based project.
Foreign researcher permits
Because BRIN sits at the center of Indonesia’s national science and technology governance, it is also the relevant coordinating body for the research-permit process that foreign nationals and foreign institutions must complete before conducting research activities in Indonesia, consistent with the framework established under Law No. 11/2019. Research administrators supporting an outbound researcher or an institutional partnership involving fieldwork, sample collection, or data gathering inside Indonesia should build the foreign-research permit process into project timelines early: it is a distinct, government-mandated compliance step, separate from any grant application or funding agreement, and separate from other Indonesia-specific permits that may also apply (for example, conservation-area access permits administered by Indonesia’s environment and forestry ministry for fieldwork inside protected areas). Institutions should confirm current permit procedures directly with BRIN or Indonesia’s diplomatic missions before finalizing a project timeline, since permitting mechanics are the kind of administrative detail most likely to change year to year.
What this means for research administrators
- Identify which relationship applies. Before advising a researcher or drafting a collaboration agreement, determine whether the engagement is (a) an application to a BRIN funding competition, (b) a collaboration with BRIN as a research-performing partner, or (c) a permit-only interaction where BRIN is the regulator of in-country research activity. The compliance obligations differ for each.
- Expect a single point of institutional contact for what used to be four (or more) agencies. Any pre-2021 institutional relationship with LIPI, BPPT, BATAN, or LAPAN specifically is now a relationship with BRIN; legacy agency names may still appear in older MOUs, publications, or facility names, but the institutional counterparty for renewal or amendment purposes is BRIN.
- Budget realistic lead time for permitting. As with most national research-permit regimes, foreign-research authorization is not instantaneous; build it into the proposal-development and pre-award timeline rather than treating it as a post-award formality.
- Verify current call terms directly. RIIM eligibility rules, funding ceilings, and international co-funding partner countries change by competition round; treat any specific figures found in older sources as a starting point for verification against BRIN’s current published call documentation, not as fixed policy.
BRIN in context: other consolidated national research agencies
BRIN’s 2021 consolidation is part of a broader pattern of countries restructuring how they organize national research governance, though the specific institutional design varies considerably. India’s transition from the long-standing Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB) toward the broader Anusandhan National Research Foundation is a comparable recent restructuring story in the same region, though India’s reform consolidates funding coordination rather than merging research-performing institutes the way BRIN did. Research administrators tracking international funding-agency restructuring more broadly may also find it useful to compare BRIN’s operator-plus-funder model against France’s CNRS, which combines a similar dual identity at a different scale and with a longer institutional history.
Frequently asked questions
What does BRIN stand for?
BRIN stands for Badan Riset dan Inovasi Nasional, Indonesian for the National Research and Innovation Agency.
Is BRIN a funding agency or a research institute?
Both. BRIN directly employs researchers and operates laboratories and national research infrastructure inherited from the four agencies it absorbed in 2021 (LIPI, BPPT, BATAN, LAPAN), and it also runs competitive funding programs, principally RIIM, open to researchers outside BRIN itself.
What happened to LIPI, BATAN, LAPAN, and BPPT?
All four were merged into BRIN under Presidential Regulation No. 33 of 2021. They no longer exist as independent agencies; their staff, budgets, facilities, and functions were integrated into BRIN, with the core transition targeted for completion around 1 January 2022 and a full transition window of up to two years set out in the regulation.
How can international researchers get BRIN funding or collaborate with BRIN?
The main routes are BRIN’s RIIM International Collaboration co-funding track (joint calls run with partner-country funding agencies, including participation in the e-ASIA Joint Research Program), and researcher mobility schemes such as Joint Research Visits, Visiting Professor placements, and postdoctoral collaborations hosted inside BRIN research units. Separately, any foreign national conducting research activity inside Indonesia needs a foreign-research permit coordinated through BRIN.
Does BRIN require a research permit for foreign researchers?
Yes. Foreign nationals and foreign institutions conducting research in Indonesia are subject to a national research-permit process coordinated through BRIN under the framework set out in Law No. 11 of 2019 on the National System of Science and Technology. Requirements and procedures should be confirmed directly with BRIN or Indonesia’s diplomatic missions before a project begins, since permitting mechanics are subject to change.
Sources and further reading
- BRIN official site: brin.go.id
- Law No. 11 of 2019 on the National System of Science and Technology (Sisnas Iptek) — the legal basis for Indonesia’s consolidated science and technology governance
- Presidential Regulation (Peraturan Presiden) No. 33 of 2021 — the regulation establishing BRIN and merging LIPI, BPPT, BATAN, and LAPAN
- UN-SPIDER Knowledge Portal, National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN)
- University of Hawai’i Press, The National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN): A New Arrangement for Research in Indonesia
This guide summarizes BRIN’s institutional structure and funding mechanisms as publicly reported and documented; specific competition terms, budget figures, and permit procedures change over time and should be verified against BRIN’s current official publications before relying on them for a live project.
