Research Infrastructure – Large Equipment and Facilities in Denmark

Deadline: 18-Jan-23

The Novo Nordisk Foundation has launched the applications for the Research Infrastructure – Large Equipment and Facilities.

Purpose

With the Research Infrastructure Programme, the Novo Nordisk Foundation wishes to strengthen the Danish research environment by supporting the establishment and maintenance of open infrastructures needed to achieve excellence in research and innovation.

Goals

The goal of the research programme is to:
- Ensure that researchers have access to state-of-the-art research facilities.
- Ensure that potential users have access to qualified technical assistance.
- Ensure that the research infrastructure is continuously developed and maintained.
- Boost other research environments, local, national, or international.

Areas of Support

The infrastructure applied for should enable research and development within the Foundation’s strategic focuses on biomedicine and health sciences, sustainability and biotechnology, and natural and technical sciences.

Specific overarching research fields can be:
- Biomedicine
- Clinical and translational medicine
- Industrial and environmental biotechnology
- Plant science, agriculture, and food biotechnology
- Natural sciences with potential applications in health or sustainability
- Technical sciences with potential applications in health or sustainability
- Computational science, including data science, with potential applications in health or sustainability.

Funding Information

A total of up to DKK 130 million is available for grants between DKK 5 – 25 million for a period of up to 5 years.

Types of Expenses

Applicants may apply for funding for the following types of expenses:
- Equipment
- Establishment and installation of the infrastructure
- Operating expenses
- Salary for academic or technical personnel (AC TAP or TAP)
- Bench fee for personnel whose salary is covered by the grant
- Training of technical personnel
- Data management
- Direct administrative expenses.

Eligibility Criteria

The applicant must be employed and have his/her primary affiliation as senior scientist, associate professor, or professor, at a university or other not-for-profit research institution in Denmark. The applicant must document expertise at the highest level within the relevant research field.
The research infrastructure must be anchored at a Danish research institution with expertise within the relevant field. This is to ensure that the infrastructure develops in parallel with the scientific progress in the area, and that there are qualified personnel to operate and maintain the equipment, as well as to supervise others in its use.
Besides the applicant, there must be 3-5 core collaborators associated with Danish research environments, committed to be core users of the equipment or facility. Core collaborators signify researchers for whom no funding is requested in the budget, but who will be among the drivers of the research which the infrastructure will support. In this context, an industrial partner could also be a core collaborator. Other collaborators relevant for the infrastructure may be mentioned in the project description, e.g., international collaborators, but these should not provide letter of support or CV. It is an advantage, if core collaborators also encompass researchers from national research institutions outside the main applicant’s research institution.

Special rules for applications:

An applicant may submit only one application per call.
As this grant does not allow funding for the applicant’s salary, the applicant must be able to account for own salary during the entire grant period applied for.
NNF does not allow double funding of project-specific expenses. If an applicant has applied for, or has received, funding for the project or parts of the project from others, this must be detailed in the budget of the application. If the applicant receives funding for the project or parts of the project from other sources following submission of the NNF application, NNF should be contacted immediately.
It is not possible to hold more than one active Research Infrastructure grant. Researchers with an active grant may apply for a new grant during the final year of the grant, however, a new grant cannot be activated until the existing grant is completed and no longer active.
It is permitted to hold two or more active NNF grants of different types, i.e., researchers with an active Infrastructure grant may apply for a new grant of a different type, e.g., project grant.
The general conditions that apply when receiving a grant from the NNF can be found on their webpage.