Villum Young Investigator
PlagAIrism project: getting generative AI to provide references to its training data
Granted amount:
DKK 7.0m
Villum Young Investigator
Villum Foundation is pleased to announce a competition for the appointment of outstanding early career scientists as Villum Young Investigators. A total of 10-15 grants are expected to be awarded in 2025.
At the time of the application deadline, applicants must have between two and eight years of research experience since completion of their PhD.
Applicants are typically experienced postdoctoral researchers, assistant professors, or associate professors. Associate professors must not have more than two years' standing at the time of the application deadline. Any leaves of absence, such as working in the private sector, military service, or sick/parental/care leave, will be considered when determining how long an applicant has been employed as an associate professor.
Applicants are selected based on their past research performance, future research plan and potential to become research leaders.
Applicants must have a clearly defined research goal for the full five-year grant period, and the research must be of such scale that it requires the formation of a research group made up of at least two researchers in addition to the grant holder/PI, for example, one PhD student and one postdoc. It is not possible to apply for a grant period of less or more than five years.
Researchers already established at a Danish research institution can apply for up to DKK 8 million.
Villum Foundation wishes to encourage the recruitment of international researchers to Denmark. If you have been employed outside Denmark for at least two of the last three years at the time of application, you can apply for a maximum of DKK 10 million.
Villum Foundation is a party to the agreement between a number of private foundations and the Danish universities on a common model for indirect costs. This means that indirect costs are covered through a project supplement calculated from the number of project-funded full-time academic staff equivalents in certain staff categories.
The project supplement is DKK 250,000 per project-funded full-time academic staff equivalent in eligible staff categories.
In accordance with the agreement, a Villum Young Investigator grant does not cover salaries for academic staff in group A (professors, associate professors, and assistant professors). If you apply as a postdoc, your salary will not be covered if you are promoted to assistant professor during the lifetime of the project.
Applicants may apply a total of two times.
Villum Foundation is committed to diversity and focuses on equal opportunities throughout the assessment process and grant period (you may find our Gender Policy here).
Status
Open
Maximum application amount
DKK 10m
Application
- Open for submissionsApplication
- Deadline for submissions
14:00
The selection process is divided into two steps.
Step 1: The Villum Young Investigator committee evaluates the applications based on the Terms of Reference and decides which applicants should be invited for an interview.
Step 2: Based on the application and an interview with the applicant, the committee recommends to the board of Villum Foundation which applicants should receive a Villum Young Investigator grant.
4 June 2025, 14.00 CET: Deadline for applications
September 2025: Decision to proceed to Step 2 (interview)
5-7 November 2025: Interviews with the selected applicants
December 2025: Rejection or approval of grant
Villum Young Investigator Programme has a special committee for selecting nominating the most suitable candidates. The members are:
- Chair Klaus Mølmer, Professor, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen
- Philip John Withers, Professor of Materials Science, The University of Manchester
- Søren Fournais, Professor, Department of Mathematics, University of Copenhagen
- Stine Helene Falsig Pedersen, Professor, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen
- Catherine Heppell, Professor of Physical Geography, Queen Mary University of London
- Mikael Käll, Professor, Department of Physics, Chalmers University of Technology
- Mårten Ahlquist, Professor, Theoretical Chemistry & Biology, KTH Royal Institute of Technology
- Rüdiger Urbanke, Professor, Department of Computer Science and Communications, The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne
- Hanna Kokko, Professor, Institute of Organismic and Molecular Evolution, Johannes Gutenberg University
You can read more about our working group and committees in technical and natural science
A Villum Young Investigator grant is expected to be a “defining grant” that enables the grantee to establish their first research group they will lead and allows the grantee to demonstrate independent leadership in science.
Applicants are not eligible if they have received an ERC Starting Grant, DFF Sapere Aude Research Leader grant, Novo Nordisk NERD or Hallas-Møller Investigator Grant, Carlsberg Foundation Semper Ardens Accelerate grant, or similar grants intended to help promising young research leaders establish their own research group and profile.
Applicants must have between two and eight years of research experience since completion of their PhDs.
Associate professors may not have more than two years' standing at the time of the application deadline.
Villum Young Investigators are required to devote at least 75% of their total effort to the direct conduct of technical and/or natural sciences and education at a Danish research institution.
The research must be conducted at the Danish research institution where the applicant is employed.
The grant cannot be used to cover the salary of permanently employed or tenure-track scientific staff.
Any leaves of absence, such as working in the private sector, military service, or sick leave, will be considered when determining how long an applicant has been employed as an associate professor. The extended period is calculated as the actual number of months of leave.
For applicants who have been on maternity/paternity or parental leave after obtaining their PhD, the period after their PhD can be extended by calculating the actual number of weeks of leave and multiplying that by 2.
The period of leave, including start date and end date, must be stated in the CV.
Health or veterinary research, i.e. research focused on the health of humans and animals, including nutrition, medicine, biomedicine, pharmacology, and research within diagnostics and methods for examination and treatment.
Furthermore, applicants affiliated with departments whose main scientific focus is within these areas (including university health departments, hospitals, the Danish Cancer Society, DTU Health Tech, and SDU Health Informatics and Technology) are not eligible to apply and will receive an administrative rejection.
The application must contain the following documents in pdf format:
- Application (download guidelines).
- CV using the provided template.
- Budget in the provided template.
- Letter of support from the institution.
The documents above must be submitted as four separate pdf files.
I have applied unsuccessfully for a Villum Young Investigator grant two times. Can I apply in 2025?
No, you can only apply in 2025 if you have not applied previously or applied only once, e.g. in 2024.
Can I apply for only three or four years of research?
No, the duration of the project must be five years.
What is meant by “research group”?
A research group is made up of at least two researchers in addition to the grant holder/PI (for example, one PhD student and one postdoc).
What is meant by “two years’ tenure”?
If you have been employed as an associate professor for more than two years prior to the application deadline, as indicated by your employment contract, you are not eligible for the Villum Young Investigator grant.
The application system allows me to add co-applicants. Is this required?
No, the Villum Young Investigator Programme is not meant to include co-applicants. Our application system is used for all our programmes, some of which do allow co-applicants.
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