Learning more about how the brain and the nervous system control bodily movement, and developing new materials for the electronics of the future are the aims of two of the 22 projects in receipt of funding from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.
The Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation has awarded a total of SEK 640 million to 22 research projects in the fields of medicine, science and technology that are considered to offer potential for future scientific breakthroughs.
“These grants have been awarded to promising and exciting projects at the forefront of international research. The Foundation supports long-term basic research that benefits Sweden, and gives researchers complete freedom to formulate and test their hypotheses. Funding applications are evaluated by the foremost international researchers in each field,” explains Peter Wallenberg Jr, Chairman of the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.
Some other examples of project goals are: better cancer therapies, new knowledge about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, how our seas may be impacted by future environmental changes, increasing fiber-optic capacity, and clues about how the brain can repair itself.
Project Funding Awarded in 2018:
(More information about the projects is available on the relevant university websites.)
Medicine:
Project: “Cell turnover in human health and disease”
Grant: SEK 40,600,000over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Jonas Frisén, Karolinska Institutet
Project: “Understanding the origin and heterogeneity of childhood neuroblastoma”
Grant: SEK 36,700,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Ruth Palmer, University of Gothenburg
Project: “Translating mechanisms of cytotoxicity in natural killer cells and gamma-delta T cells into next generation cell-based cancer immunotherapy”
Grant: SEK 31,200,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Björn Önfelt, KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Project: “The systematic identification of parasite gene function”
Grant: SEK 30,000,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Oliver Billker, Umeå University
Project: “Integrative structural biology of mammalian fertilization: Unveiling the beginning of life from gametes to atoms”
Grant: SEK 29,400,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Luca Jovine, Karolinska Institutet
Project: “Capturing the regenerative potential of the brain”
Grant: SEK 21 600 000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Malin Parmar, Lund University
Project: “Tissue-crosstalk and metabolic regulation of type 2 diabetes”
Grant: SEK 18,000,000 over three years
Principal investigator: Professor Juleen Zierath, Karolinska Institutet
Project: “Decoding the logic of the neural circuits for motor actions”
Grant: SEK 16,200,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Abdel El Manira, Karolinska Institutet
Natural sciences:
Project: “Constraining past variations in the global biogeochemical silica cycle”
Grant: SEK 34,200,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Daniel Conley, Lund University
Project: “The birth of the mitochondrial ribosome”
Grant: SEK 31,500,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Dr. Alexey Amunts, Stockholm University
Project: “Functional quasicrystals? Harnessing the complexity of aperiodic intermetallic compounds”
Grant: SEK 28,100,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Ulrich Häussermann, Stockholm University
Project: “Deciphering the role of functional constraint and convergent evolution on genome regulation”
Grant: SEK 28,100,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Kerstin Lindblad Toh, Uppsala University
Project: “Co-evolution of protease structure and biological function”
Grant: SEK 27,500,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Peter Bozhkov, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Project: “Organofluorines: anthropogenic small-molecules for life sciences”
Grant: SEK 29,300,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Kálmán Szabó, Stockholm University
Technology/physics/mathematics:
Project: “Probing charge and mass-transfer reactions on the atomic level”
Grant: SEK 37,200,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Henrik Cederquist, Stockholm University
Project: “Understanding the dynamic universe”
Grant: SEK 37,800,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Hiranya Peiris, Stockholm University
Project: “Wide-bandgap semi-conductors for next generation quantum components”
Grant: SEK 33,400,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Igor Abrikosov, Linköping University
Project: “Unlocking the full-dimensional fiber capacity”
Grant: SEK 30,700,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Associate Professor Henk Wymeersch, Chalmers University of Technology
Project: “Novel transient states in quantum matter”
Grant: SEK 30,000,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Oscar Tjernberg, KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Project: “Hydrogen peroxide, fuel and energy technology for the future”
Grant: SEK 27,200,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Professor Magnus Berggren, Linköping University
Project: “Dynamic phenomena of magnetic materials”
Grant: SEK 22,200,000 over three years
Principal investigator: Professor Olle Eriksson, Uppsala University
Project: “From scattering amplitudes to gravitational waves”
Grant: SEK 19,100,000 over five years
Principal investigator: Dr. Henrik Johansson, Uppsala University
Contact persons:
Peter Wallenberg Jr, Chairman, Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation
Phone: +46 (0)8 545 01780
E-mail: [email protected]
Göran Sandberg, Executive Director, Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation
Phone: +46 (0)8 545 01780
E-mail: [email protected]
The 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.
Since the establishment SEK 25 billion in grants has been awarded, with annual funding of SEK 1.8 billion in recent years, making the Foundation the largest private funder of scientific research in Sweden, and one of the largest in Europe.
kaw.wallenberg.org