Ansøg om midler

Postdoctoral Fellowships for research within Plant Science, Agriculture and Food Biotechnology

Call opens
16 June 2022
Call closes
25 August 2022 2:00pm (CET)
Announcement of results
December 2022
Recurring calls
Expected June 2023
Application guidelines

Purpose

Applications are invited for individual fellowships to support outstanding postdoctoral scientists conducting research within plant science, agriculture and food biotechnology. The intention of the fellowship is to enable excellent young scientists, to develop their own independent research area. Fellowships must be based at a university or other non-profit research institution in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, or Sweden.

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.

Proposals focusing industrial biotechnology and environmental biotechnology should be submitted to the Novo Nordisk Foundation Committee Industrial Biotechnology and Environmental Biotechnology, while proposals with a focus on pharmaceuticals and therapeutics should be submitted to the Novo Nordisk Foundation Committee on Bioscience and Basic Biomedicine.

About the grant

Amount

Up to DKK 2.5 million per grant

Location

Denmark, Nordic Countries (excl. Denmark)

Career stage

PhD students, Postdoctoral fellowships

Committee

Komite for Plantevidenskab, Landbrug og Fødevarebioteknologi

Contact

For grant inquiries
Sisse Marquina-Jongberg
Senior Scientific Lead, PhD
[email protected]
Camilla Stensgaard Andersson
Grant Manager
[email protected]

Nordic Region

Eligibility

An applicant must either:

  • have a PhD or equivalent degree obtained within 6 years of the application deadline date,

or

  • be a PhD student who will defend her/his thesis before April 1, 2023.

As part of the application, applicants need to submit a host letter from the Nordic host institution and letters of support from other institutions supporting the fellowship.

Funding

The postdoctoral fellowship period can be from 1 to 3 years, of which at least 1 year must be used at the Nordic host institution. The duration of the fellowship should reflect the time frame of the research activities.

Funding up to DKK 800.000 per year is available for expenses including the fellowship recipient’s own salary and direct project costs, as well as up to 5 % administrative costs. An additional amount of up to DKK 100.000 can be included to cover costs related to research stays abroad exceeding 6 months.

Application process

Applications must be completed and submitted using the NNF’s application system following the instructions in the “Information and guidelines for applicants” pdf, found at the link above. Additional essential information regarding eligibility, funding and submission requirements is found in this pdf.

Grant listings

All the projects we have funded are listed here. You can customise your search by grant year and category and use free text search.
GRANT

Managing a grant

Read more about how to manage a grant and what general information you need as a grant holder.