Status: 12th round of Centers of Excellence

The call for proposals for new Centers of Excellence was launched in the summer of 2023, and information meetings were held with researchers at all universities. The foundation encouraged all fields to submit proposals.

The Center of Excellence initiative, the foundation’s flagship
program and its primary funding mechanism, has the objective of strengthening Danish research by providing the best possible working conditions and organizational set-up for selected top researchers.

The centers are funded through large and flexible grants for up to ten years over two grant periods of six and four years, respectively. The centers are based at research institutions, of which the vast majority are at universities.

There is no standard template for creating a Center of Excellence. Centers can be established within and across all fields of research. The centers differ in size and organization and may consist of one or more research teams. Some centers increase in size during the grant period, employing more than 60 people, while others may have 15 or fewer members. A Center of Excellence is headed by a center leader who is not only a distinguished researcher able to demonstrate excellence in their own research, but also a visionary leader able to create a dynamic and thriving research environment. It is crucial that center researchers share an overall idea or vision and that the center has a well-defined and relevant framework and composition, under which outstanding research of a high international caliber is conducted — research

that is ambitious, highly creative, original, scientifically daring, and potentially groundbreaking. So far, the foundation has established 131 Centers of Excellence. Of these, 46 received funding from the DNRF in 2023. Centers of Excellence are established in so-called application rounds. The first application round was in 1992-93. The 12th round of Centers of Excellence is currently under way, with the establishment of new centers to be announced in the autumn of 2024.

Calls for new centers are announced approximately every two-and-a-half years and involve a two-stage application process. In the first stage, researchers from all scientific fields are invited to submit short outline proposals.

These proposals are processed solely by the DNRF board. In the second stage, selected applicants are invited to submit full proposals, each of which is reviewed by three international experts within the relevant research area(s) in an open review process. Prior to the final selection, the board meets with each applicant for an interview.

A figure illustrating the time frame of the current 12th application round is provided below. The DNRF received 166 outline proposals by the deadline on December 14; 25 of those applicants were selected to submit a full proposal by May 6, 2024.

At its meeting in September 2024, the board will make its final funding decisions, and new centers are likely to start operation in early 2025.

The same criteria are applied throughout
the assessment and selection process. The criteria used in the application rounds rest on four pillars and are formulated as follows:

• The research idea is ambitious and original and has the potential for real scientific breakthroughs in the relevant research field(s).

• The proposed center leader has a high standing in the international research community, the needed leadership skills, as well as the time and capacity to undertake the task of running a Center of Excellence.

• The center includes high-quality personnel in order to establish a creative and dynamic international research environment that

will provide an inspirational training ground for young researchers.

• The focus, structure, and size of the proposed center are such that they set the stage for scientific ventures that are not feasible within conventional funding from other sources.