Centers of Excellence

The meetings are open to anyone interested.

Aalborg University
March 9 at 10:00 – 11:30
Registration: Lise Degn (lde@adm.aau.dk)

Aarhus University
March 9 at 14:00 – 15:30
Registration: Birgit Christensen (bc@au.dk)

Technical University of Denmark
March 10 at 10:00 – 11:30
Registration: John Peter Wittschieben (jpewi@dtu.dk)

University of Copenhagen
March 11, Søndre Campus at 9:00 – 10:30
Registration: her
11. March, Nørre Campus at 11:30 – 13:00
Registration: her

Copenhagen Business School
March 12 at 9:00 – 10:30
Registration: Mette Damsbo (md.research@cbs.dk)

IT University of Copenhagen
March 12 at 11:30 – 13:00
Requests: ITU Research Support (research@itu.dk)

Roskilde University
March 13 at 10:00 – 11:30
Registration: Anne Wæhrens (annewae@ruc.dk)

University of Southern Denmark
March 13 at 14:00 – 15:30
Registration: Charlotte Weber (chweb@sdu.dk)

The DNRF is committed to continuously strengthening assessment and monitoring procedures based on transparency, sound criteria and close dialogue with funded environments. As part of the 13th call for Centers of Excellence the foundation will explore a new procedure for pre-proposal assessment to further strengthen the identification of pre-proposals with a strong breakthrough potential.

Purpose of peer advisors
Decisions on pre-proposals are made solely by the board of the foundation, which consists of nine members who possess insight into research at the highest international level within their respective fields.

As a new initiative during the 13th round of Centers of Excellence applications, a number of peer advisors will be involved in the assessment procedure to further strengthen the identification of pre-proposals with strong breakthrough potential, including those outside board members’ immediate expertise.

The involvement of peer advisors is designed to enrich the board’s evaluation process as an additional source of scientific understanding. As said, decisions are made solely by the board and peer advisors do not participate in the board’s decision-making.

The peer advisor model is an experiment, currently only planned for the 13th round of applications for Centers of Excellence. It will be thoroughly evaluated after the application round to determine if it contributed positively to the DNRF board’s evaluation of pre-proposals.

Peer advisors’ participation in assessment of pre-proposals
Peer advisors will read all pre-proposals within their respective main scientific areas (broken down to three main areas: Social Sciences and Humanities, Physical Sciences and Engineering, and Life Sciences) and will be asked to focus on the identification of those pre-proposals with high breakthrough potential.

Peer advisors will not be asked to present a written peer review report or any other kind of written documentation. External peer review by peer reviewers will take place as usual for full proposals only.

During the board meeting on November 30 – December 1, 2026, peer advisors will be present during the board’s initial deliberations and will be invited to answer questions and offer reflections when requested by the board.

The guidelines provided for peer advisors can be found here: Guide for Peer Advisors

Peer advisors are paid a fee of 50 euros for reading each pre-proposal within their main scientific area.

Within the two last Centers of Excellence application rounds the foundation received approximately 40 pre-proposals within Social Sciences and Humanities, approximately 50 within Physical Sciences and Engineering, and approximately 80 within Life Sciences.

Board’s preliminary conclusions and final decisions on pre-proposals
At the board meeting on December 2, 2026, and after consultation with the peer advisors, the board will make preliminary conclusions on each pre-proposal. In general, as no peer advisor report is provided, no hearing of applicants (partshøring) is foreseen during the board’s assessment of pre-proposals. Only if required by law, e.g. if new material information is presented, the respective applicants will be informed and invited to comment (hearing). The board will identify those pre-proposals for which a hearing of applicants (partshøring) may be required. The foundation expects that hearing of applicants (partshøring) will be necessary only for a limited number of pre-proposals.

At the board meeting on January 11, 2027, the board makes final decisions on the pre-proposals. Decision letters (rejections and invitations for full proposals) will be sent mid-January 2027.

Scientific composition of the board and the peer advisors
The DNRF board consists of nine members who possess insight into research at the highest international level within their respective fields. More information on the board can be found here.

The board has identified scientific areas where involvement of peer advisors could be useful. It is expected that peer advisors will be identified from relevant former ERC Advanced Grant panels to ensure that peer advisors have experience in evaluating grant applications at the highest level of competition. Furthermore, it is expected that 2-4 peer advisors from each of the three main scientific areas will be involved in the assessment procedure.

The list of peer advisors will be continuously updated as they are identified:

1) Social Science and the Humanities:

2) Physical Sciences and Engineering:

3) Life Sciences:

In order to ensure board decisions are not influenced by biased advisors, advisors are asked to declare a possible conflict of interest, before the pre-proposals are sent out for reading. If a conflict is identified, the advisor will not be used. Further information can be found in the foundation’s Guidelines for Conflicts of Interest.

Timeline pre-proposals

September 11, 2026, at 12 noon
Deadline for pre-proposals

November 30 – December 1, 2026
Board’s assessment of pre-proposals under involvement of peer advisors

December 2, 2026
Board’s preliminary conclusions and identification of pre-proposals for which a hearing of applicants (partshøring) is required

January 4, 2027
Deadline for hearing of applicants (partshøring)

January 11, 2027
Board’s final decision on pre-proposals

Mid-January 2027
Decision letters (letters of rejection and invitation for full application)

For any questions regarding the involvement of peer advisors in the assessment of the pre-proposals to the Danish National Research Foundation’s 13th Centers of Excellence application round, please contact Research Advisor Mikkel Bruus, e-mail: mb@dg.dk, tel.: +45 3318 1958.

The Danish National Research Foundation provides overhead as part of a grant to cover indirect costs associated with carrying out the research project, but which cannot be directly attributed to the specific project. These may include shared expenses for rent, administration, etc. Overhead is calculated as a fixed percentage of the grant for the research project’s direct expenses, i.e., expenses that can be directly attributed to the project.

For some institutions, overhead is calculated on the basis of all direct expenses, while for others, it is calculated on the basis of salary expenses alone.

It is the institution that defrays and records the relevant expense that is allocated overhead based on the applicable rate for that type of institution.

Note that some of the overhead rates have changed compared to the foundation’s previous overhead practice. The new overhead rates will apply to contracts entered into with new Centers of Excellence from the 13th application round onwards.

The application process is two-staged and consists overall of:

1) Pree-proposals which are processed by the board with the involvement of peer advisors. The decision on which applicants are invited to submit a full application is made solely by the board.

2) Full applications that are sent for external peer review to three international experts. Prior to the final decision, applicants are offered the opportunity to comment on the peer reviews and the board conducts an interview with each applicant.

The central criterion in the assessment of proposals for new Centers of Excellence is the quality of the proposed research. Applications must outline plans for highly ambitious research and contain original ideas with the potential to lead to real breakthroughs.

The board’s assessment criteria can be found in the Guide for Applicants for new Centers of Excellence in the 13th application round.

The DNRF will send full proposals for external peer review to three international experts within the relevant research area(s). Each reviewer is asked to deliver a report of three to five pages according to the Guide for Reviewers. Peer reviewers are not asked to rank or grade the proposal.

The foundation uses an open and transparent process. Peer reviewers and applicants will know each other’s identities. Applicants will be offered the opportunity to comment on the peer reviews prior to the board’s decision.

The board conducts a short interview with each applicant (proposed center leader) prior to the final decision. During the interview, the applicant is asked to present the overall research idea and to elaborate on the strategy for realizing the idea.

The board bases its decision on:

• Applicant’s full proposal
• The three peer reviews for each application
• The applicant’s responses to the reviews
• The interview of the proposed center leader

The peer reviews serve as an important input to the board’s decision, but it is the board alone that makes the final decision.

The board has thorough discussions of each application arguing in each case why an application should or should not be funded. Ultimately, the board must choose to fund relatively few research proposals from a large number of exceptional applications.

After the board makes its final decision, the foundation and the center leader initiate negotiations with the host institution. It should be noted that no funding is granted before the final contract has been signed.

An official inauguration of the new center is held shortly after it starts operating.

The center grant is constituted by two periods of respectively six and four years. A midterm evaluation is conducted after five years and a final evaluation is made after 9 years.

Follow-up meetings are held annually with each center and centers are asked to submit annual reports.

Follow-up meetings

The Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF) wishes to have a running dialogue with the Centers of Excellence funded by the foundation. Hence, members og the foundation’s board and secretariat visit with each Center of Excellence annually for a follow-up meeting.

Mid-term Evaluation

It is a standard procedure of the DNRF to carry out a mid-term evaluation approx. after five years of the grant’s lifetime.

The evaluation is initiated by the DNRF requesting the centers to submit a self-evaluation report and a research proposal for a new four-year funding period, along with a selection of publications by the center. The center is hereafter evaluated by three international experts within the center’s field(s). It is important that the members of the panel have, besides scientific expertise and status, considerable experience in research management and organization.

The members of the evaluation panel receive the center’s self-evaluation report, the first grant period’s research plan, and the center’s application for a second grant period and a selection of the center’s publications ahead of their evaluation. The evaluation panel members each write an evaluation report.

The material which is produced in connection with the mid-term evaluation will provide an overview of the center’s research results, the ambitions for a second grant period, and an external evaluation of this. The mid-term evaluation forms part of the board’s decision-making on the future of the center.

Final Evaluation

Before the center expires, it is a standard procedure of the DNRF to conduct a final evaluation. The centers up for final evaluation have been funded for a total of ten years, divided into two periods.

Publications after two years expiry of grant

Two years after expiry of the CoE grant the center must submit a list of publications that have been published after the grant period ended.