From transparent fruit flies to the meaning of baby cries
The Villum Foundation has awarded funding to 52 research projects, all united by their courage to think differently and take risks. The projects were selected through an anonymous peer-review process, where the originality and potential of the idea outweigh the researcher’s CV. This creates space for the unexpected and the untested – which is precisely the essence of Villum Experiment.
“Villum Experiment is about giving room to ideas that don’t necessarily fit into conventional frameworks. We believe that major breakthroughs often hide in the quirky and the wild,” says Thomas Bjørnholm, Director of Research at the Villum Foundation, and continues:
“By removing names and credentials from the evaluation, we open up the field to curiosity and courage.”
Why do ticks bite some people more than others?
One of this year’s grant recipients, Professor Karen Angeliki Krogfelt from Roskilde University, will investigate why some people are more attractive to ticks than others. The project aims to identify which skin bacteria are particularly enticing to this small but potentially dangerous parasite.
“By observing ticks’ preferences for skin bacteria, we hope to better understand why they choose to bite certain animals and humans over others. Our research could lead to new methods for reducing the risk of tick bites – for example, by applying specific skin bacteria that act as repellents,” says Karen Angeliki Krogfelt.
Enzymes and AI in the fight against microplastics
Another grant recipient, postdoc Colleen Varaidzo Manyumwa from DTU, will develop a new method to break down microplastics. Microplastics are notoriously difficult to remove from our food, water, and air – making them one of the world’s major environmental culprits. Colleen’s project will explore how enzymes, aided by artificial intelligence, can recognise and degrade microplastics, even when composed of many different plastic types.
Fruit flies can reveal the building blocks of life
Postdoc Jiawei Xu from Aarhus University will use genetic engineering to create a transparent fruit fly. The project could offer new insights into how tissues develop and organs form, by making it possible to observe biological processes that have so far been hidden behind the insect’s exoskeleton.
From baby cries to ancient vertebrates
Among the other projects is an experiment to map what infants are actually trying to communicate when they cry. Participating parents will receive feedback on their babies’ crying patterns in exchange for data from their baby monitors. Another project investigates why some vertebrates live up to 200 years, and a third aims to accelerate species identification using machine learning.
“It’s precisely this kind of research – the kind that dares to ask unexpected and profound questions – that we want to promote through Villum Experiment,” says Thomas Bjørnholm.
“We don’t know what will create new paradigms – what will give us a better understanding of the world and lead to groundbreaking insights. That’s why we must dare to support the unpredictable.”
Villum Foundation launched Villum Experiment in 2017. Since then, the foundation has awarded nearly DKK 900 million to bold and unconventional research ideas through the program.
• Focus on innovative and unconventional research ideas
• Anonymous evaluation ensures emphasis on the potential of the idea rather than the researcher's merits
• High risk factor and potential for breakthroughs
• Supports research ideas in their early stages
• Annually awards approximately 50 grants
Villum Experiment recipients 2025:
Zhenghao Liu, postdoc: Feedforward-enabled synthetic dimension photonics, DKK 2.5 million
Brian Seger, professor: CO₂ electrolysis to pharmaceuticals, DKK 2.5 million
Nefeli Effrosyni Novak, researcher: Can the two-state theory of water revolutionise aqueous solutions?, DKK 2.2 million
Nikolaos Angelou, researcher: Laser-based unmanned aircraft system for wind sensing, DKK 2.5 million
Wenjing Zhang, professor: PlasUp: Rekindle Plastic Waste Upcycling by Microwave Reactor with High-Entropy Catalyst, DKK 2.5 million
Gaoneng Dong, researcher: Unlocking silicon's hidden power: on-chip phase transitions enabled by a new nanocavity, DKK 2 million
Innokentiy Zhdanov, postdoc: Room temperature integrated light-squeezing single-photon detectors for quantum systems, DKK 2.5 million
Yong Liu, postdoc: Watt-class Optical Beam Steering on Silicon Photonics, DKK 2.5 million
Shima Kadkhodazadeh, senior researcher: Live Band Nanoscopy: Mapping electronic bands in working photoelectrochemical devices, DKK 2.4 million
Weihua Tian, researcher: Engineering an extracellular vesicles-based transfection method for challenging-to-transfect cells, DKK 2.5 million
Emil Hovad, postdoc: Scientific machine learning for advancing the understanding of the 4D microstructural evolution in metals (SciML4D), DKK 2.5 million
Wei Yan, associate professor: Tackling the Forever Problem: Thermodynamic Solutions to PFAS Pollution, DKK 2,2 million
Jakob Birkedal Wagner, professor: Sub-Ångström 3D Mapping of Single Impurities in Crystals via Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopy, DKK 2.5 million
Riccardo Ragona, postdoc: PAMS; Looking at fusion plasmas with new eyes, DKK 2.5 million
Xavier Zambrana-Puyalto, postdoc: Van der Waals meta-crystal for valleytronics, DKK 2.5 million
Colleen Varaidzo Manyumwa, postdoc: PlastiXterminator: Next-Gen Synergistic Enzyme Complexes for Microplastic Degradation, DKK 2.5 million
Kathrin Rousk, associate professor: The symbiotic trinity – the next step in evolution? EvoMoss, DKK 2.4 million
Daniel Hershcovich, assistant professor: Aligning Multi-Agent Interactions for Sustainable Food Behaviour (AMAI), DKK 2.5 million
Jannis Straube, postdoc: ESCAPE – Exploring the molecular mechanisms underlying hatching processes in Nannochloropsis, DKK 2.5 million
Bárbara Parreira, postdoc: Back from the brink: experimental de-extinction in a model organism to restore lost diversity, DKK 2.5 million
Dominique Jeanette Tobler, associate professor: Forever gone: degrading per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances with biochar and light, DKK 2.5 million
Vandana Kaushal, postdoc: Let yeast do the tasting: Can RNA barcodes make in-situ tasting a reality?, DKK 2.5 million
Jesper Bendix, professor: Xenon capture: addressing the missing-xenon paradox, DKK 2.5 million
Morten Bo Madsen, associate professor: Oceans and Plate Tectonics on Early Moon? Danish Instrument for Moon Mission will Help Answer this Question, DKK 2.5 million
Albin Sandelin, professor: Methods for relating spatial patterns of microenvironmental pH and oxygen levels with gene expression of single cells, DKK 2.5 million
Hans Thordal-Christensen, professor: STRUCTURE-STRENGTH: Protect the plant through protein structure insight, DKK 2.5 million
Nan Yang, postdoc: War or Peace: Is There an Ecological Switch in the Microbial World?, DKK 2.3 million
Eliza Cook, assistant professor: PFAS in snow: How much don't we know? (Fluoroland), DKK 2,5 million
Phillip Wagner Kastberg Jensen, assistant professor: Quantum Hardware Architecture based on Electron Scattering in Molecules, DKK 2 million
Yong Zhang, associate professor: Can bacteria subsist on bacteriophages?, DKK 2.5 million
Alexey Solodovnikov, associate professor: Can we build a species discovery factory?, DKK 2.5 million
Nikoline Olsen, postdoc: Ageless DNA – the epigenetics of extreme centenarians, DKK 2.5 million
Shuai Zheng, assistant professor: HOST-IT: Tricking pathogens into revealing their toxic secrets, DKK 2.5 million
Johan Fynbo, professor: 4D Tomography of turbulence in the atmosphere, DKK 2.2 million
Nikolaj Abel, assistant professor: One cryo-ET tag to solve them all, DKK 2.5 million
Michal Budzik, associate professor: Ordo ab Chao: Scaling in Fracture of Complex Materials, DKK 2.3 million
Brian Julsgaard, associate professor: Optical fingerprinting of electron dynamics in wide-bandgap materials, DKK 2.5 million
Ian Marshall, associate professor: AGAMBLE – Anaerobic Growth of Aerobic Methanotrophic Bacteria in Lake Environments, DKK 2.5 million
Michael Møller Hansen, professor: The Genetic Load of Plenty: When Too Much Diversity Becomes a Burden, DKK 2.5 million
Hans Gellersen, professor: Measuring Intent in Gaze Attention, DKK 2.5 million
Asger Givskov Jørgensen, postdoc: Molecular Footprints: Monitoring RNA Aptamer–Protein Interactions through Chemical Modifications and Nanopore Readout, DKK 2.5 million
Jiawei Xu, postdoc: Making Live Transparent Fruit Fly for Live Tissue Imaging, DKK 2.5 million
Stefanie Zollmann, associate professor: Foveated rendering based on a model of eye dominance, DKK 2.5 million
Aske Mottelson, associate professor: What Do Infant Cries Reveal? A Crowdsourcing Experiment, DKK 2.5 million
Andrzej Wąsowski, professor: From False Certainty to True Confidence: Pose Estimation Beyond Deep Learning, DKK 2.5 million
Alessandro Bruni, associate professor: Neuro-Symbolic Federated Learning with Secure Multi-Party Computation, DKK 2 million
Farshid Naseri, postdoc: Using AI to Discover Battery Anti-Aging and Life-Extending Charging Patterns Based on Dynamic Pulse Modulation, DKK 2.5 million
Yang Wu, postdoc: Next-Generation Controller for Grid-Forming Power Converters through Artificial Intelligence, DKK 2.2 million
Anders Olsen, associate professor: Engineering chemical communication between kingdoms, DKK 2 million
Narcis-Adrian Petriman, postdoc: TIDE – Transforming microalgae into plastic-degrading vehicles that decontaminate polluted waters, DKK 2.5 million
Mathias Lander Skavenborg, postdoc: Electrifying Manganese Complexes for Stationary Energy Storage, DKK 2.4 million
Karen Angeliki Krogfelt, professor: Why are some humans more attractive to tick bites than others?, DKK 2,5 million
