The Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation has granted SEK 810 million to 24 research projects that have the possibility of leading to new scientific breakthroughs. In addition to this, SEK 410 million has been allocated to national infrastructure in life science including a major screening project in the cardiopulmonary field.
“It is always pleasing for the Board to grant project applications of high scientific quality. The Foundation applies a strict peer-review procedure and the applications are assessed by the foremost international researchers in their respective fields. This way, the Board ensures that the grants go to the scientifically most excellent projects,” says Peter Wallenberg Jr., Vice Chairman of the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.
Besides 21 new project grants and three continuation grants to ongoing projects, SEK 100 million has been granted to “SCAPIS”, the Swedish CArdioPulmonary bioImage Study, a unique study with major opportunities for research breakthroughs in the fight against pulmonary and cardiovascular diseases. The study, which is led by a national research team and was initiated by the Swedish Heart-Lung Foundation, involves all of Sweden’s university hospitals and will encompass 30,000 people.
“The project’s goal is to identify individual risks for cardiac infarction, sudden heart arrest and other heart diseases and lung diseases such as COPD,” explains Göran Sandberg, Executive Director of the Foundation.
SEK 310 million was also approved in grants for national infrastructure in life science.
“The largest part of this is going to new technology for the sequencing of the human genome. This is an effort that makes it possible for the researchers to sharply increase the number of sequencings and to do so at a lower price,” explains Göran Sandberg.
This opens entirely new opportunities for genetic and epidemiological studies.
“The researchers are given good possibilities of mapping the origins of widespread diseases at a molecular level. This can in turn provide leads to the development of new kinds of medicines. The technology is also improving the genetic diagnosis of hereditary diseases and cancer diagnostics,” confirms Sandberg.
Project grants awarded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation in 2014
Further information can be found on the websites of the higher education institutions concerned.
Medicine
Project: ”Identifying stem cell states and state transitions”.
Grant: SEK 42 717 000 for a five-year project
Principal Investigator: professor Stefan Karlsson, Lund University
Project: ”A two-front attack on malignant melanoma”.
Grant: SEK 41 941 000 for a five-year project
Principal Investigator: professor Martin Bergö, University of Gothenburg
Project: ”Aging and Cancer: A Developmental Perspective of Leukemia”.
Grant: SEK 41 742 000 for a five-year project
Principal Investigator: professor Mikael Sigvardsson, Lund University
Project: ”Master regulatory long non-coding RNA molecules in cellular differentiation”.
Grant: SEK 40 846 000 for a five-year project
Principal Investigator: professor Chandrasekhar Kanduri, University of Gothenburg
Project: “Hitting cancer on target - Novel strategies for optimizing drug target engagement for improved brest cancer therapies”.
Grant: SEK 39 628 000 for a five-year project
Principal Investigator: professor Jonas Bergh, Karolinska Institutet
Projekt: “Insulin and Immunity: when complement takes control”.
Grant: SEK 29 265 000 for a five-year project
Principal Investigator: professor Anna Blom, Lund University
Project: “The brain microcircuits integrating information from several senses”.
Grant: SEK 29 352 000 for a five-year project
Principal Investigator: professor Paolo Medini, Umeå University
Technolog/physics/mathematics
Project: “Interactive Physical Systems: Moduli Spaces, Inference and Control”.
Grant: SEK 18 558 000 for a five-year project
Principal Investigator: professor Danica Kragic Jensfelt, KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Project: “Quantum states of photons and relativistic physics on a chip”.
Grant: SEK 50 343 000 for a five-year project
Principal Investigator: professor Per Delsing, Chalmers University of Technology
Project: “Bottlenecks for particle growth in turbulent aerosols”.
Grant: SEK 33 151 000 for a five-year project
Principal Investigator: professor Bernhard Mehlig, University of Gothenburg
Project: “Nanoscale superconducting devices for a closer look at brain activity”.
Grant: SEK 34 397 000 for a five-year project
Principal Investigator: professor Dag Winkler, Chalmers University of Technology
Project: “Geometry and Physics”.
Beviljat anslag: 35 131 000 kronor under fem år
Principal Investigator: professor Tobias Ekholm, Uppsala University
Project: “IMPACT: Comets, asteroids and the habitability of planets”.
Grant: SEK 22 563 000 for a five-year project
Principal Investigator: professor Melvyn Davies, Lund University
Project: “The tail of the sun”.
Grant: SEK 33 642 000 for a five-year project
Principal Investigator: professor Xavier Crispin, Linköping University
Project: “Discovering Dark Matter Particles in the Laboratory”.
Grant: SEK 28 883 000 for a five-year project
Principal Investigator: professor Jan Conrad, Stockholm University
Natural Science
Project: ”Single-particle cryo-EM studies of membrane protein biogenesis and structure”.
Grant: SEK 31 000 000 for a five-year project
Principal Investigator: professor Gunnar von Heijne, Stockholm University
Project: “Understanding the environmental regulation of the annual growth cycle in trees”.
Grant: SEK 39 763 000 for a five-year project
Principal Investigator: professor Rishikesh Bhalerao, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Project: “The genomics of species diversification”.
Grant: SEK 42 249 000 for a five-year project
Principal Investigator: professor Hans Ellegren, Uppsala University
Projekt: “Anisotropic Forces in Colloid Chemistry”.
Grant: SEK 42 398 000 for a five-year project
Principal Investigator: professor Peter Schurtenberger, Lund University
Project: “Structural dynamics and allosteric regulation of mammalian channels and transporters”.
Grant: SEK 28 868 000 for a five-year project
Principal Investigator: Dr. David Drew, Stockholm University
Project: “Dynamics of epigenetic memory”.
Grant: SEK 27 309 000 for a five-year project
Principal Investigator: professor Jan Larsson, Umeå University
Continuation grants
Project: ”Novel cancer targets within nucleotide metabolism”
Grant: SEK 21 330 000
Principal Investigator: professor Thomas Helleday, Karolinska Institutet
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Project: ”Coherent cytoskeleton dynamics captured with cutting Edge X-ray methods”.
Grant: SEK 26 470 000 kronor
Principal Investigator: professor Richard Neutze, University of Gothenburg
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Project: ”Designed Nanoparticles by Pulsed Plasma”.
Grant: SEK 23 004 000 kronor
Principal Investigator: professor Ulf Helmersson, Linköping University
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Infrastructure of national importance in Life Science
KTH Royal Institute of Technology, The future of whole genome sequencing in Sweden
Grant: SEK 2 000 000.
Stockholm University, Wallenberg Advanced Bioinformatics Infrastructure, WABI
Grant: SEK 68 000 000 in continuation grant.
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Swedish Universities Metabolomics Platform
Grant: SEK 21 000 000 in continuation grant.
University of Gothenburg, NMR for life
Grant: SEK 21 000 000 in continuation grant.
Uppsala University, The Swedish CArdioPulmonary bioImage Study (SCAPIS)
Grant: SEK 100 000 000.
Principal Investigator: professor Lars Lind, Uppsala University