Call for Applications: Large Equipment and Facilities Grant (Denmark)

Goal

• The goal of the programme is to:
  • Ensure that researchers have access to state-of-the-art research facilities, including the latest and most advanced equipment.
  • Ensure that users have access to qualified technical assistance on the use of the facilities and/or equipment.
  • Ensure that the research infrastructure is continuously developed and maintained, also after its implementation.
  • Boost other research environments, local, national, or international, including companies (e.g., small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and incubators), that cannot invest in this to the same extend.

Field of Research

• The infrastructure applied for should enable research and development within NNF’s strategic focuses on biomedicine and health sciences, sustainability and biotechnology, and natural and technical sciences as well as data science.
• Specific overarching research fields include:
  • 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
• Applications for the Large Equipment and Facilities Programme within natural, technical, or computational sciences must explicitly describe how the research enabled by the research infrastructure may have potential future applications in health or sustainability.

Funding Information

• A total of up to DKK 135 million is available for grants between DKK 5 million and DKK 25 million for projects with a duration of up to six years.

Eligible Expenses

• Equipment: Purchase of equipment for the infrastructure. This is not necessarily a single piece of equipment. However, the intent is that only larger equipment should be included in the “Equipment” budget category.
• Establishment and installation of the infrastructure: This may include minor modifications necessary to establish and operate the infrastructure.
• Operating expenses: including materials, consumables, and service contracts, which are directly related to operation and maintenance of the infrastructure.
• Salary for academic or technical personnel (AC-TAP or TAP): that will run and maintain the equipment. These can also offer research-based training, consultation, data processing, data analysis, data management, software/database development, and dissemination of data/tools. Note that the requested TAP salary can be used for personnel with an academic background but cannot be used to conduct research.
• Training of technical personnel: relevant for operation and maintenance of the infrastructure. This includes travel and accommodation.
• User training activities: targeting groups of PhD students and/or postgraduates including industry. This could, for instance, be realised as on-site training, workshops or summer schools. Notice that the grant does not directly support expenses for holding workshops or summer schools; the NNF Conferences, Symposia, and Workshops Programme can cover such expenses.
• Data management: incl. expenses related to acquisition and storage of data.
• Bench fee: can be included in the budget for support of personnel whose salary is covered by the grant for application (not applicable to Danish Universities).
• Direct administrative expenses: for up to 5% of the funding applied for (not applicable to Danish Universities).

Ineligible Expenses

• The foundation will not award funding for:
  • Commercial activities
  • Overhead/indirect costs (such as rent, electricity, water and maintenance)
  • Double funding of projects
  • Salary for scientists or research activities

Eligibility Criteria

• The applicant, who should hold a PhD, must be employed and have his/her primary affiliation as senior scientist, academic technical staff (“AC-TAP”), associate professor, or professor in a time-unlimited position, at a university or other not-for-profit research institution in Denmark. The applicant must be able to account for own salary during the grant. 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 users associated with Danish research environments, committed to use the equipment or facility. Core users signify researchers for whom no funding is requested in the budget, but who will be among the drivers of the research supported by the infrastructure. In this context, an industrial partner may also be a core user. Other targeted users of the research infrastructure including international should only be mentioned in the project description. It is considered an advantage, if the core users include researchers from national research institutions outside the main applicant’s research institution.
• Applications may be administratively rejected if any mandatory information (e.g. hosting letter, support letters) is incomplete or missing.

For more information, visit Novo Nordisk Foundation.