LF Experiments 2021

The Lundbeck Foundation awards DKK 50 million to audacious projects

LF Experiment Grants 2021

26 researchers at Danish universities are receiving funding to conduct innovative neuroscience projects under the Lundbeck Foundation’s LF Experiments research programme.

The Lundbeck Foundation recently granted DKK 50.8 million to 26 researchers at Danish universities under the LF Experiments programme.

The projects relate predominantly to neuroscience – the Lundbeck Foundation's focus area – and the common denominator for all of the projects is their audaciousness.

‘The projects that receive funding all have a highly innovative mindset, and they typically have a rather unconventional and audacious approach to the challenge they’re taking on. The very purpose of the LF Experiments research grants is to promote projects of this type – to support researchers who really have the courage to think outside the box.’
Anette Høye, Scientific Project Manager at the Lundbeck Foundation.

The 26 researchers receiving a 26 LF Experiments research grant all have at least a PhD in their fields of research.

In 2021, nine women (18.4% success rate) and 17 men (12.7% success rate) are receiving an LF Experiments grant, and the projects receiving funding span a broad range of research fields:

from potential correlations between anorexia and bacterial composition in the gut, through a technique for dating the protein accumulation in the brain associated with neurodegenerative diseases, to development of a portable system for precise recording of epileptic seizures.

Each grant is worth just under DKK 2,000,000 on average.

The money is paid out over two years and gives recipients the opportunity to devote themselves to the hypothesis they wish to investigate further.

Experience shows that, often, LF Experiments do not produce the outcomes the researcher originally expected. However, as Anette explains, the Lundbeck Foundation does not consider this to be a problem:

‘Because the projects have the potential to generate ground-breaking new knowledge in the field of neuroscience – and if you want to create something new, and you apply an audacious mindset to obtain it, there’s inevitably a risk that you’ll not achieve the goal you set yourself. That’s a risk the Lundbeck Foundation is willing to take. And another side of the coin is that although you may not achieve the precise goal you set, you may very well discover something else that could be hugely significant.’

In addition to its risk appetite – the hallmark of LF Experiments – the programme has a unique selection procedure that differs in many ways from the usual review process for research grants.

To begin with, the applications are reviewed anonymously, and reviewers only need to address the actual idea or hypothesis presented by the applicant in their written application. They have no idea who is behind the project or of the applicant’s gender. Furthermore, the selection procedure includes a “decisive votes” system – a kind of trump card. Each reviewer uses this trump card to single out an applicant who, in their opinion, MUST be given funding – regardless of what the other reviewers ultimately think of the project in question.

Thus, the trump card gives a chance to the particularly audacious projects – those the reviewers disagree on.

 

Listed below are the recipients of the 2021 LF Experiments research grants: