Call for Entries: Distinguished Innovator Grant Program 2025

Particular focus will be placed on projects covering sustainable and high yielding agriculture, sustainable food for healthy diets, and climate change mitigation technologies to support the green transition.

Purpose

• The purpose of the Distinguished Innovator Grant Health is to accelerate commercialisation of research findings and the development of novel technologies within the health sciences.

Scope

• SCOPE The Distinguished Innovator project idea and focus must be directly linked to improving the lives of patients and health of people (health), or sustainable and high yielding agriculture, sustainable food for healthy diets, and climate change mitigation technologies to support the green transition (sustainability).

Funding Information

• A total of up to DKK 68-122.4 million is available for grants of up to DKK 6.8 million for projects lasting up to 3 years and a yearly budget of up to 2,266,667 million DKK, including project supplemet.

Eligibility Criteria

• The Main Applicant:
  • The main applicant must be a senior faculty member or researcher employed at a research institution or hospital/clinic in the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, or Sweden).
  • It is required that the main applicant has a personal proven track record within innovation, i.e., previous experience of academic innovation projects and experience of establishing patents and spinouts from the academia.
  • It is required that the main applicant will act as an ambassador for innovation within academia and engage younger researchers and the surrounding innovation ecosystem.
• Co-Applicants:
  • Co-applicants can be included in the project, but not required.
  • Co-applicants may come from the same hosting institution as the main applicant or from a different university, hospitals or research institutions locally and abroad.
• Hosting Institution:
  • A Distinguished InnovatorGrant must be administered by a non-profit organization.
  • A Distinguished InnovatorGrant cannot be given to a company.
  • Projects from incubator development programs and projects where IPR is owned by a university’s holding institution are eligible to apply if:
    • The administrating institution is the university
    • The project and its findings are anchored in academia
    • The project has not resulted in the establishment of a company (given company has not established a CVR/company number)

Application Requirements

• The Applicant tab pertains to information about all those involved in an application, meaning the main applicant or contact person applying on behalf of an organisation/institution as well as any co-applicants:
  • Applicant Details: The main responsible party for the application can enter their details through the Applicant Details-task with the type ‘Applicant’.
  • Personal Details: The main applicant should provide information on their full name, title, phone number, work e- mail address, date of birth, gender, and nationality under PERSONAL DETAILS. Some of the fields may have been transferred from the user profile. Enter details of the main applicant’s highest educational degree achieved using the drop-down menu. If you need to enter details for another degree, select OTHER from the drop-down menu.
  • Current Institution: Main applicants should enter the contact details of their current workplace.
  • Experience CV: for main applicant can be a maximum of 4,000 characters. Please include in your CV, a short bibliographic overview summarizing total number of peer reviewed publications, number of first authorships, number of corresponding authorships, number of citations, and h-index.
  • Publications list: (for main applicant) can be a maximum of 5,000 characters (including spaces, line breaks and special characters). Please only include the 10 most relevant publications for evaluating your merits. Include a complete specification of all authors for each publication with your own name highlighted.
  • Summary: of own research can be a maximum of 2,000 characters. Please include a brief summary of your own research.
  • Supplementary Information: (under Applicant Information) can be a maximum of 2,000 characters. This field can be utilized to describe special circumstances regarding your application that the evaluation committee should be aware of, e.g., current terms of employment.
  • Previous and Current Grants from NNF: If you have received any grants from NNF as an applicant or a co-applicant within the past five years, you must provide the application number, project title, grant period (in years), grant amount and the percentage share of the grant (100% if there is no co-applicant).

For more information, visit Novo Nordisk Fonden.