Purpose

The Novo Nordisk Foundation wishes to make significant contributions to the sustainability of society and the environment. The Ascending Investigator grants support the continued development and consolidation of excellent research leaders within plant science, agriculture and food biotechnology in the Nordic countries.

The proposed research should address major challenges within plant, agricultural, and food science associated with developing sustainable agriculture and food production. The research should be fundamental in character with a clear and strategic outlook to improve sustainability and potential solutions. The proposed research should significantly extent existing knowledge beyond state-of-the-art and may have a high-risk profile. The research should be based on life science research disciplines.

Non-exclusive list of prioritized areas:

• Development of plants with high productivity, resiliency, and resource-use-efficiency for food, fiber, materials, fuel and energy, chemicals, or climate change mitigation
• Utilization of microorganisms to improve sustainability across the value chain from primary agricultural production to end-product
• Development of agricultural-, food-, and forestry systems with higher productivity, circularity, and biodiversity, and with minimum impact on environment and climate
• Development of plant-, microorganism-, and fungi-based foods with low resource-use-technologies and high functionality, organoleptic, and nutritional quality
• Utilization of precision fermentation, fungi, algae, and cellular agriculture for novel food production
• Development of methods and technologies, including those driven by data science, that enable and support sustainable agriculture and food production.

The program will not support:

• Research primarily focusing on livestock, livestock commodities, and feed.
• Research with their main research component on nutritional uptake and clinical studies

Projects with a focus on pharmaceuticals and therapeutics should submit their application to the Novo Nordisk Foundation Committee on Bioscience and Basic Biomedicine.

^*For the biotechnology requirement, the OECD short definition of biotechnology will be used as a reference for assessments. The OECD single definition of biotechnology is: the application of science and technology to living organisms, as well as parts, products and models thereof, to alter living or non-living materials for the production of knowledge, goods and services.