Strategic grants are initiated by the Foundation as a complement to investigator-initiated projects. Besides being of strategic relevance, a strategic project must also be of the highest scientific quality and be beneficial to Sweden.
Calls regarding Strategic initiatives are posted for application when the Foundation has identified an area that is in particularly urgent need of support for the good of the country.
Current strategic grants:
- Max IV, SEK 400 million for radiation tubes and SEK 60 million for postdoctoral programs
- Wallenberg Wood Science Center, SEK 450 million in total
- Stem cell biology, research for new treatments for cardiovascular and muscle diseases and leukemia, SEK 100 million
- Human Protein Atlas Project, HPA, a mapping of the protein expression of the human being’s roughly 20,000 protein-coding genes, SEK 900 million
- Brainpower, an initiative targeting neurological diseases such as MS and Parkinson’s, SEK 100 million
- Spruce Genome Project, a mapping of the genome of the spruce tree, SEK 75 million
- Nobel Center, SEK 395 million
- Life Science SEK 1,7 billion during 2014-2025
- Wallenberg Autonomous Systems Program, WASP, SEK 1.3 billion during 2015-2025
MAX Laboratory
The MAX Laboratory in Lund is a Swedish national laboratory that supports three research areas: accelerator physics, research based on the use of synchrotron radiation, and nuclear physics that uses energy-rich electrons.
The Foundation has granted a total of more than SEK 1 billion to the MAX Laboratory. The latest contribution involves radiation tubes for the new MAX IV facility. They are the first radiation tubes that are custom-designed for spectroscopic studies of various systems under natural conditions. Scientists will be able to examine biological or geological samples in their natural wet environment. They will also be able to monitor corrosion on a surface in a realistic chemical environment and to observe processes in atmospheric gases.
The Foundation is also funding a scholarship program to help educate young researchers in the field.
MAX IV - with the mission to make the invisible visible
Wallenberg Wood Science Center
Research at the Wallenberg Wood Science Center focuses on enabling the creation of new products from raw materials from Swedish forests by exploiting more of the wood. Sustainable packaging, electronics, and body implants are some possible products.
Swedish forest can be converted into new environmentally friendly super material
Stem cell biology
The Karolinska Institutet used the grant to start the Wallenberg Institute for Regenerative Medicine, WIRM.
With our burgeoning knowledge of stem cells and regenerative medicine, entirely new perspectives have opened up for the treatment of a number of diseases. Research at the WIRM covers a broad spectrum of therapeutic areas but with a special focus on the blood system. An important mission is the further development of bone-marrow transplants for pathological conditions and patient groups that cannot be treated today.
WIRM - a research center focused on the blood system
Human Protein Atlas Project
These scientists are mapping the human being’s 20,000 proteins and how they are expressed in the body’s tissues and organs. The project was launched in 2005, and at the end of 2010 the researchers had reached the halfway mark, having mapped 10,000 proteins.
The findings are being published in a freely available protein atlas on the Internet for the use of researchers around the world to advance their knowledge of the role of proteins in various diseases. When the protein atlas, which contains images and facts about various proteins, is finished, it will be a powerful tool in the struggle against cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and disorders in the nervous system.
Gigantic mapping of mankind's machinery
Swedish Brain Power
The Swedish Brain Power Network brings together the most prominent Swedish researchers in the field to improve the lives of those who suffer from neurodegenerative diseases.
The research program aims to enhance the possibility of early diagnosis and treatment of the degenerative diseases of the brain, primarily Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, ALS.
Brain Power against dementia, ALS and Parkinson's
Mapping the genome of the spruce
A team consisting of researchers from the Umeå Plant Science Centre, a research center collaboratively run by Umeå University and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, along with scientists from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology and the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, has mapped, sequenced, the whole genome of the spruce.
The project will provide entirely new tools for more efficient cultivation of spruce and pine trees, as it will yield new potential to understand the biological background to key properties for productivity and quality.
Mapping of the spruce genome paves the way for faster cultivation
Nobel Center
The Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation has decided to grant SEK 395 million for the construction of a new Nobel Center.
The Foundation supports the Nobel Foundation's vision of creating a center with a mixture of museum activities, research seminars and training activities aimed at schools.
The purpose of the grant is to contribute to an international forum for researchers but also to create a destination that arouses curiosity and interest in science among students, visitors and locals.
The Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation supports excellent Swedish research and hope that the new Nobel Center will be a place for knowledge exchange and transfer of knowledge on many levels. The center will be a place for discussing, poking and discovering scientific issues.
The grant comes with no conditions regarding the architectural design or the location of the center. The Nobel Foundation is responsible for governing and managing the process regarding the architectural design and location of the Nobel Center in collaboration with the City of Stockholm.