Research projects 2026

Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation has awarded a total of SEK 900 million to 30 research projects in the fields of medicine, the natural sciences and technology that are considered to offer potential for future scientific breakthroughs.

The research spans a broad range of fields. Examples of the projects’ aims include energy- and data-efficient AI; understanding extreme floods shaped by both human activity and natural processes; improving our understanding of the mechanisms underlying fibromyalgia and psychiatric conditions; simulating the first galaxies; developing new materials to remove hazardous water contaminants; conducting studies to restore lost hearing; creating new magnets for emerging quantum technologies; and investigating various aspects of cancer.

From 2011, when Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation introduced the project grant program, through 2026, 334 projects have been awarded a total of SEK 9.2 billion.

Natural Sciences

Project: Arctic lake productivity transformed under climate change

Grant awarded: SEK 26,000,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Ann-Kristin Bergström, Umeå University

Project: HYdrogen as CURRENcy – deciphering the multi-scale architecture and thermodynamic limits of the electron marketplace in microbial consortia

Grant awarded: SEK 33,000,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Associate Professor Courtney Stairs, Uppsala University

Project: SynPlant: Programmable plant-based materials

Grant awarded: SEK 26,000,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Associate Professor Eleni Stavrinidou, Linköping University

Project: Tipping points in protein–lipid co-assembly (TIPPOINT)

Grant awarded: SEK 25,000,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Emma Sparr, Lund University

Project: Decoding extreme floods driven by human–nature interactions (DecodeFloods)

Grant awarded: SEK 27,000,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Giuliano Di Baldassarre, Uppsala University

Project: Elucidating the design principles of distal control in rubisco catalysis

Grant awarded: SEK 27,000,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Johannes Messinger, Umeå University

Project: Filming the hidden workings of life at the atomic scale

Grant awarded: SEK 32,000,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Magnus Andersson, Umeå University

Project: Progressive nitrogen limitation as a driver of the boreal forest carbon sink (NitroLimit)

Grant awarded: SEK 26,000,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Michael Gundale, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

Project: From groundwater to the atmosphere: the impact of hydrological extremes on methane production and emissions

Grant awarded: SEK 35,000,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Ryan Sponseller, Umeå University

Project: Enemy at the gates: how bacteria sense and defeat viral infection at their membrane

Grant awarded: SEK 36,000,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Vasili Hauryliuk, Lund University

Medicine

Project: Harnessing immune niches for efficient CAR-T cell therapy of brain tumors

Grant awarded: SEK 25,000,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Anna Dimberg, Uppsala University

Project: Do antibiotics, bacteria and gut mucosa together drive cancer development?

Grant awarded: SEK 25,000,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Dan Andersson, Uppsala University

Project: Regenerative blueprints for hearing restoration

Grant awarded: SEK 30,000,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Associate Professor Emma Andersson, Karolinska Institutet

Project: Neural Pathways for Motor Control: Structure, Synapses, and Behavior

Grant awarded: SEK 29,000,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Gilad Silberberg, Karolinska Institutet

Project: The Inflammatory Proteome–Protease–Peptidome (P3) Atlas: From Homeostasis to Pathology and Therapeutics

Grant awarded: SEK 30,000,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Johan Malmström, Lund University

Project: Decoding peripheral immune-muscle-metabolic pathways in fibromyalgia

Grant awarded: SEK 27,000,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Johanna Lanner, Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences

Project: Molecular Architecture of Tissue-Specific Insulin Resistance in Humans

Grant awarded: SEK 36,000,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Juleen Zierath, Karolinska Institutet

Project: Splicing Codes Controlling Brain Circuit Connectivity in Health and Disease

Grant awarded: SEK 37,000,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Rickard Sandberg, Karolinska Institutet

Project: Endogenous γdTCR ligands: the hidden regulators of γdT cell fate and function

Grant awarded: SEK 35,000,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Associate Professor Taras Kreslavsky, Karolinska Institutet

Project: Killing cAncer With URacil (KAWUR)

Grant awarded: SEK 25,000,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Thomas Helleday, Karolinska Institutet

Engineering/Physics

Project: Multimodal Representation Learning of Human Olfactory Perception

Grant awarded: SEK 28,000,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Danica Kragic Jensfelt, KTH Royal Institute of Technology

Project: HYDRA: HYdration-Driven Regulation of Condensate Assembly

Grant awarded: SEK 28,000,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Foivos Perakis, Stockholm University

Project: Black-Hole Dynamics and Gravitational Physics

Grant awarded: SEK 30,000,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Associate Professor Henrik Johansson, Uppsala University

Project: Pushing the Frontier of Water Purification – Pioneering Multifunctional Materials and Methods by AI-guided Discovery and Smart Design

Grant awarded: SEK 32,000,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Johanna Rosén, Linköping University

Project: Stranger Things – from Hypernuclear Interactions to Neutron Stars

Grant awarded: SEK 37,000,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Karin Schönning, Uppsala University

Project: Nanoscale control of altermagnetism

Grant awarded: SEK 34,000,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Kimberly Dick Thelander, Lund University

Project: MUSIC – Mapping and Understanding Spatio-temporal adaptation In Cancer

Grant awarded: SEK 27,000,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Maria Tenje, Uppsala University

Project: New magnets for new quantum technologies

Grant awarded: SEK 28,000,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Olle Eriksson, Uppsala University

Project: AI Goes Efficient

Grant awarded: SEK 25,000,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Giovanni Volpe, University of Gothenburg

Project: Zooming into Cosmic Dawn

Grant awarded: SEK 24,000,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Oscar Agertz, Lund University