A new batch of researchers is poised to embark on fascinating neuroscience projects thanks to grants from the Lundbeck Foundation Ascending Investigator Programme. The money comes at a very opportune time in their careers.

The Ascending Investigators Programme seeks to circumvent a classic problem scientists often face halfway through their careers, usually at the point after a PhD and a postdoc position when they want to set up research projects and teams of their own.

At this stage in their careers, researchers can find it difficult to force their way through the eye of the needle and are often weighed and found wanting when funding applications are assessed. Each year, the Lundbeck Foundation tries to tip the scales in favour of these scientists at the halfway point in their careers by awarding a series of Ascending Investigator grants in the field of neuroscience.

‘There is an unfortunate tendency for funding bodies – both public and private – to favour new talents and established scientists at the expense of those at the halfway point in their careers,’ explains Peter Thostrup, Scientific Programme Director at the Lundbeck Foundation. 

‘Ascending Investigators is an attempt by the Lundbeck Foundation to counteract this inappropriate trend by funding talented neuroscientists and helping them move on in their careers and start new projects at Danish universities and hospitals,’ he adds.

A large number of applications are submitted to the programme every year. They are assessed by the Talent Panel, which has now selected the 11 scientists who will receive funding in 2022 and can call themselves Lundbeck Foundation Ascending Investigators for the next four years.

The recipients are either mid-career associate professors or professors who want to conduct research into a new area related to the brain and nervous system, according to Jan Egebjerg, Director of Research at the Lundbeck Foundation.

‘Our Ascending Investigator Programme targets talented people in mid-career, either with smaller teams under development or more established scientists who want to strike out in a new direction. All of the successful applicants have been assessed according to the highest international standards by the Lundbeck Foundation Talent Panel, comprising leading researchers from abroad,’ he says.

The 11 projects, all within the spectrum of neuroscience, neurology or psychiatry, have been deemed by the Talent Panel capable of making a significant contribution to research related to the brain and nervous system and potentially of helping to treat brain disorders.