The 12th application round for new Centers of Excellence was closed in December 2023. The DNRF was pleased to receive 166 outline proposals from all scientific fields, up from 149 in round 11. The Centers of Excellence ultimately granted are likely to start operating at the beginning of 2025.

Read more about the applications and timeline here.

Based on applications submitted during three rounds in 2023, the DNRF awarded three DNRF Chairs, allowing the universities to support and boost the start-up research activities of newly recruited outstanding professors coming from international academic institutions to Danish universities.

Read more about the new DNRF Chairs and the Chair program. Read more

Center of Excellence grants are given for a period of six years and are extended for four additional years conditional on a satisfactory mid-term evaluation involving a self-evaluation and an external review. The board’s decision for each center is based on: 

All ten Centers of Excellence of round 9, launched in 2017-18, were extended.

The first Danish research excellence program, which was also a pioneer at the European level, took off in 1993 when the first DNRF Centers of Excellence were established. This means that the DNRF now has a unique opportunity to take stock of the program’s long-term impact, considering that the returns on investments in basic research to society are long-term. Two studies provided us with perspectives on the long-term impact of Centers of Excellence, on what it is, more specifically, about a Center of Excellence that is particularly important in underpinning this impact, and where there is room for improvement. One of the studies was carried out by the Danish Centre for Studies in Research and Research Policy (Dansk Center for Forskningsanalyse) at Aarhus University; the other one was carried out by the DNRF secretariat. 

Read more in the preface and at dg.dk/en/the-foundation/publications/impact/.

The long-term impact from DNRF Centers of Excellence was also the theme at the DNRF’s traditional annual meeting, to which the main actors in the sciences and in the area of science policy are invited. Three current or former scientists with a deep knowledge of the legacy of former centers within the fields of catalysis, quantum science, and public/green economics demonstrated, how the centers initiated a build-up of capacity in areas that were only later to emerge as crucial for the Danish and global community. 

The meeting was opened with warm support for the DNRF from Christina Egelund, Minister for Higher Education and Science. Morten Meldal, Nobel Prize winner in 2022 for discoveries made at a Center of Excellence some 20 years ago, gave a presentation praising the conditions for breakthrough research at Centers of Excellence. And Mikkel Haarder, director at Danish Industry with overall responsibility within education and science, endorsed the DNRF’s legacy, recommending that the number of Centers of Excellence be doubled.

Christina Egelund, Minister for Higher Education and Science
Picture from www.sciencereport.dk

Mikkel Haarder, Director, Danish Industry

Morten Meldal