SEK 835 million in grants to 30 excellent research projects

New, effective, personal cancer immunotherapy, next-generation semiconductors, the importance of Arctic methane emissions for the climate and improved protection against infections and viruses are examples of basic research that is now receiving grants from Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.

A total of 30 projects, in medicine, natural sciences and technology, have been evaluated after an international peer review process to have such high scientific potential that they have the possibility of leading to future scientific breakthroughs. Each project has been evaluated by at least four or five international experts in the respective field. 

“The Foundation's evaluation process is focused on identifying projects that are at the forefront of international research and that can contribute to new knowledge,” says Peter Wallenberg Jr, Chair of Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. 

Since 2011, when Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation established the project grant form, until 2024, 303 projects with a total budget of SEK 8.3 billion have been granted.

Grants in 2024:

Natural sciences:

Project: ”Observational Constraints on Arctic Ocean Methane Systems as Tipping Elements and Triggers of Climate Overshoot (TippingArcticOceanMethane)”
Grant: SEK 25 000 000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Örjan Gustafsson, Stockholm University

Project: ”Connecting the shore to the lake: towards revised carbon and greenhouse gas budgets of lake and land ecosystems (RELITORATE)”
Grant: SEK 32 000 000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Sebastian Sobek, Uppsala University

Project: ”Context matters: How underlying DNA sequence affects genomic processes”
Grant: SEK 25 000 000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Sebastian Deindl, Uppsala University

Project: “Dynamic Regulation of the Mitochondrial Gene Expression Network (MiGeNet)
Grant: SEK 32 000 000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Maria Falkenberg, University of Gothenburg

Project: ”CLUPEA -unravelling molecular mechanisms behind adaptation to environmental heterogeneity and change”
Grant: SEK 26 000 000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Leif Andersson, Uppsala University

Project: ”Conserved concepts and divergent details of membrane-bound viral replication organelles”
Grant: SEK 24 000 000 over five years
Principal investigator: Dr. Lars-Anders Carlson, Umeå University

Project: ”Chiral Geminal Diboronates: Unique Single-Carbon Linchpins for Expansion of the Chemical Space” 
Grant: SEK 35 000 000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Kalman Szabo, Stockholm University

Project: ”DarkTree: Charting the Dark Regions of the Insect Tree Using Computer Vision, Genomics, and Probabilistic Machine Learning”
Grant: SEK 24 000 000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Fredrik Ronquist, Swedish Museum of Natural History

Project: ”Tracing how Atlantic Water impacts North Greenland: THAWING”
Grant: SEK 24 000 000 over five years
Huvudsökande: Professor Helen Coxall, Stockholms universitet

Project: ”Harnessing evolutionary transitions, machine learning, and genomics to decode pollen evolution and unravel sexual selection mechanisms shared across kingdoms”
Grant: SEK 31 000 000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Tanja Slotte, Stockholm University

Project: ”Next Generation Spatial Membrane Biology”
Grant : SEK 26 000 000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Björn Högberg, Karolinska Institutet

Medicine

Project: “New chronic pain mechanisms: Spatiotemporal dynamics of dysregulated proteins in inflammatory pain”
Grant: SEK 34 000 000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Patrik Ernfors, Karolinska Institutet

Project: “Novel Nitric Oxide Signaling Modalities for Cardiovascular Therapeutics”
Grant: SEK 31 000 000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Jon Lundberg, Karolinska Institutet

Project: “Neoantigen discovery with cellular reprogramming”
Grant: SEK 35 000 000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Filipe Pereira, Lund University

Project: “A Spatially Functional Atlas of the Healing Intestinal Barrier: Implications for Inflammatory Bowel Diseases”
Grant: SEK 26 000 000 over five years
Principal investigator: Docent Eduardo Villablanca, Karolinska Institutet

Project: “T-MAP: Translating the Functional Role of Mucosal IgA Clonal and Glycoprofiles to Effective Humoral Mucosal Protection”
Grant: SEK 25 000 000 over five years
Principal investigator: Docent Charlotte Thålin, Karolinska Institutet

Project: “Spatially resolving tumor and immune clonal niches in human breast cancer”
Grant: SEK 26 000 000 over five years
Principal investigator: Dr. Camilla Engblom, Karolinska Institutet

Project: “Expressing mtDNA – from basic mechanisms to pathophysiology in humans”
Grant: SEK 24 000 000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Anna Wredenberg, Karolinska Institutet

Project: “Dissecting the unexplored dimensions of B cell memory”
Grant: SEK 26 000 000 over five years
Principal investigator: Docent Joan Yuan, Lund University

Technology/physics

Project: “Transforming ceramics into next-generation semicondutors”
Grant: SEK 26 000 000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Vanya Darakchieva, Lund University

Project: ”Tunable Optomechanical Microcavities with Nanofluidic Access for Photochemistry under Confinement”
Grant: SEK 24 000 000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Timur Shegai, Chalmers University of Technology

Project: ”Attosecond Pulse Induced Quantum Electronic Processes”
Grant : SEK 34 000 000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Raimund Feifel, University of Gothenburg

Project: ”Cooper-pair spectroscopy: A new window into the world of superconductivity”
Grant: SEK 30 000 000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Oscar Tjernberg, KTH Royal Institute of Technology

Project: ”From atomistic to macroscopic understanding: unravelling lignin's untapped potential as earth's most abundant natural phenolic compound”
Grant: SEK 24 000 000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Minna Hakkarainen, KTH Royal Institute of Technology

Project: ”Rewriting Cosmic Reionization with Next-Generation Early Universe Observations”
Grant: SEK 25 000 000 over five years
Principal investigator: Docent Matthew Hayes, Stockholm University

Project: ”From Atoms to Devices: Understanding Interface Phenomena for Better Perovskite Optoelectronics”
Grant: SEK 25 000 000 over five years
Principal investigator: Docent Julia Wiktor, Chalmers University of Technology

Project: ”Making and breaking of molecular bonds”
Grant: SEK 35 000 000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Henning Schmidt, Stockholm University

Project: ”Quantum geometry and flat bands towards room temperature superconductivity”
Grant: SEK 24 000 000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Floriana Lombardi, Chalmers University of Technology

Project: ”Flexible X-ray detectors based on novel high-Z covalent organic frameworks”
Grant: SEK 31 000 000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Feng Gao, Linköping University

Project: ”Emerging Frontiers: unraveling the properties of the new state of matter: electron quadrupling condensates”
Grant: SEK 26 000 000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Egor Babaev, KTH Royal Institute of Technology

Contact:

Peter Wallenberg Jr, Chair, Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation
+46 (0)8 5450 1780
kaw@kaw.se

Sara Mazur, Executive Director, Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation
+46 (0)8 5450 1780
kaw@kaw.se

Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation was established in 1917. The Foundation’s aim is to benefit Sweden by supporting Swedish basic research and education, primarily in medicine, technology and the natural sciences. This is achieved by awarding grants to excellent researchers and projects.

Over SEK 37 billion in grants has been awarded since the Foundation was established. In 2023 the yearly grants to excellent basic research and education in Sweden was in total almost SEK 2.2 billion, making the Foundation the largest private funder of scientific research in Sweden, and one of the largest in Europe.