Novo Nordisk Foundation: Denmark’s Largest Private Research Funder

The Novo Nordisk Foundation is a Danish enterprise foundation and one of the largest private philanthropic funders of biomedical, clinical, and life science research in the world. It is a distinct funding channel from Denmark’s public research councils, and research administrators supporting investigators with Danish, Nordic, or European collaborators need to understand how its grant structure, eligibility rules, and application process differ from government funding. This guide covers what the foundation is, how it is organised, its main grant programmes, who can apply, and how the application process works.

What Is the Novo Nordisk Foundation?

The Novo Nordisk Foundation was established in 1989 as a Danish commercial (erhvervsdrivende) enterprise foundation, headquartered in Hellerup near Copenhagen. It traces its origins to the foundations that historically held ownership stakes in the insulin manufacturers Novo Terapeutisk Laboratorium and Nordisk Insulinlaboratorium, which merged to form Novo Nordisk A/S. Today the foundation is the controlling shareholder — through its wholly owned investment subsidiary, Novo Holdings A/S — of the pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk A/S and the biotech company Novonesis A/S (formed from the 2024 merger of Novozymes and Chr. Hansen). Novo Holdings manages the foundation’s investment assets, which fund the foundation’s grant-making activity independently of any single year’s corporate performance.

This ownership structure is what makes the foundation financially distinct from most research funders: rather than distributing government appropriations or member-institution dues, it distributes returns generated by a large, diversified investment and shareholding portfolio. By its own published figures, the foundation awarded in the order of DKK 10 billion (roughly €1.3–1.5 billion) in grants and philanthropic commitments in recent annual cycles, making it Denmark’s largest private funder of research and one of the largest biomedical philanthropic funders globally, comparable in scale to funders such as the Wellcome Trust in the UK. Because the underlying investment portfolio is exposed to market and share-price movements, year-to-year grant totals and reported asset values fluctuate; administrators should treat any specific figure as a snapshot and check the foundation’s own annual report for the current year’s numbers rather than relying on a fixed figure from this guide.

How It Differs from Denmark’s Public Research Funders

Denmark’s principal public research funder is Independent Research Fund Denmark (DFF), a government agency that distributes state appropriations through discipline-based committees and career-stage programmes such as Sapere Aude. The Novo Nordisk Foundation is not a government body and receives no state appropriation; it is a private foundation governed by its own board and by Danish foundation law, with grant-making decisions made independently of ministerial or parliamentary process. The two are frequently confused because both are Danish and both fund academic research, but they have different governance, different eligibility defaults (DFF is generally restricted to research conducted in Denmark; the Novo Nordisk Foundation runs programmes at Danish, Nordic, European, and fully international eligibility tiers depending on the call), and different subject scope (DFF funds across all disciplines through its four research councils; the Novo Nordisk Foundation concentrates on health, biomedicine, and life science, plus sustainability and life-science-ecosystem programmes).

A research administrator advising an investigator on Danish or Nordic funding options should also be aware of NordForsk, which funds multi-country Nordic research consortia under the Nordic Council of Ministers, and is a third, separate channel again — neither a private foundation nor a single-country public funder.

Focus Areas and Grant Categories

The foundation organises its grant-making around three focus areas, published on its own site (novonordiskfonden.dk):

• Health — biomedical and clinical research, including basic bioscience, translational research, and clinical medicine, historically the foundation’s core area given its origin in the insulin-manufacturing foundations.
• Sustainability — research and innovation supporting the green transition, including biotechnology applications to sustainability challenges.
• Life science ecosystem — grants supporting the broader infrastructure of Danish and Nordic life science, including entrepreneurship, translation of research into companies, and ecosystem-building activities rather than individual research projects.

Within these focus areas, the foundation distinguishes between several grant structures. Open-competition grants are the largest category by number: calls with published eligibility criteria, deadlines, and review processes that any qualifying applicant can apply to, similar in mechanics to a funding agency’s standing programme. Stand-alone grants and own initiatives are funded outside open competition, typically for strategic priorities the foundation identifies itself — large research centres, national infrastructure, or targeted responses to an emerging scientific opportunity. The foundation also runs partnerships with other funders and makes impact investments distinct from its grant-making, and awards several prizes recognising established researchers and science communicators.

Major Grant Programmes

The foundation’s programme portfolio is large and changes from year to year, so treat the following as illustrative of the range rather than an exhaustive or fixed list — always confirm current programme names, deadlines, and terms directly on novonordiskfonden.dk before advising an investigator:

• Challenge Programme — large, team-based grants for ambitious, high-risk biomedical or bioscience research that a single-investigator grant could not support; recent iterations have funded individual projects at tens of millions of Danish kroner over several years.
• Distinguished Investigator and Research Leader grants — substantial, multi-year grants for established principal investigators building or sustaining a research group, generally requiring a strong independent track record.
• Postdoctoral fellowships — individual career-stage awards supporting postdoctoral researchers, in some cases with international mobility components (fellowships that fund a period abroad followed by a return to a Nordic institution, a structure comparable in spirit to the mobility design of the EU’s Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions).
• PhD programmes — structured doctoral training, including cohort-based programmes run in partnership with Danish universities in areas such as bioscience and data science.
• Data science and computational biology grants — a newer and growing area reflecting the foundation’s stated interest in life-science ecosystem infrastructure, funding both individual researchers and shared computational resources.
• Clinician-scientist and clinically active doctor grants — programmes specifically structured for medical doctors who divide their time between clinical practice and research, recognising that this applicant group has different career and funding needs than full-time academic researchers.

Who Can Apply

Eligibility is set per programme rather than foundation-wide, and geographic scope is one of the main variables to check before an investigator invests time in an application. Broadly, Novo Nordisk Foundation programmes fall into four eligibility tiers:

• Denmark-only — some programmes require the applicant’s host institution to be Danish.
• Nordic — open to applicants based at institutions across the Nordic countries (Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland).
• European — open to applicants at institutions across Europe.
• International — open worldwide, typically for the foundation’s largest strategic or challenge-style programmes.

Within each geographic tier, programmes are further segmented by career stage and applicant type — PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, early-career independent investigators, established research leaders, and clinically active doctors are generally addressed by separate calls with separate eligibility and review criteria rather than a single generic “research grant” application. A US or non-Nordic investigator without a Danish or European collaborator should check eligibility carefully: many of the foundation’s most visible programmes (Challenge Programme, Distinguished Investigator) are pitched at Nordic or European host institutions, though the foundation’s international and partnership programmes do fund researchers based elsewhere, often in collaboration with a Nordic institution or investigator.

How to Apply

The foundation runs its own online application portal, separate from the pan-European or US federal systems a research administrator may already be familiar with. In practice, the process follows a similar general shape to other structured funder applications:

1. Identify the right call. The foundation publishes open competition calls on its own site with specific eligibility, focus area, and deadline information; because the foundation runs many concurrent programmes, matching an investigator to the correct call by career stage, geographic eligibility, and focus area is the first and most consequential step.
2. Check for a two-stage process. Several of the foundation’s larger programmes use a shorter letter-of-intent or pre-application stage before inviting a subset of applicants to submit a full proposal, a structure comparable to the letter of intent stage used by some US federal mechanisms — this varies by programme, so confirm the specific call’s structure rather than assuming either a one-stage or two-stage process.
3. Prepare institutional endorsement. As with most institutional grants, the host institution typically needs to confirm its willingness to administer the award before or alongside submission; research administrators should build in time for internal routing and sign-off exactly as they would for a national funding agency’s application.
4. Submit through the foundation’s online system by the published deadline, following the specific budget, narrative, and supporting-document requirements of that call — these differ by programme and are published alongside each call rather than standardised foundation-wide.
5. Review and outcome. The foundation uses expert peer review, generally involving international reviewers and, for larger programmes, an interview or presentation stage for shortlisted applicants before a final funding decision.

Because programme structure, deadlines, and required documents change between calls and between years, the single most reliable step for any research administrator supporting an application is to read the specific call text on novonordiskfonden.dk rather than assume last year’s process still applies.

Funding Scale and Reporting

The foundation reports its grant activity, portfolio value, and annual results through its own annual report and communications, published via novonordiskfonden.dk and Novo Holdings’ own reporting. Because the foundation’s assets are managed through its shareholdings in Novo Nordisk A/S and Novonesis A/S, the value of those holdings — and therefore the scale of grant-making the foundation can sustain — moves with the share price and broader market conditions for those companies, in a way that a government funder’s budget generally does not. Grant recipients report on awarded projects according to the terms set in their individual grant agreement, which, like eligibility and application requirements, varies by programme rather than following a single foundation-wide reporting template.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the Novo Nordisk Foundation the same as Novo Nordisk the pharmaceutical company?

No. The foundation is a separate, independent Danish enterprise foundation. It is the controlling shareholder of Novo Nordisk A/S (and of Novonesis A/S) through its investment subsidiary Novo Holdings A/S, but it operates independently of the companies’ management and its grant-making decisions are made by the foundation’s own board and committees, not by Novo Nordisk A/S.

Can non-Danish researchers apply for Novo Nordisk Foundation grants?

Yes, for many programmes. Eligibility is set per call rather than foundation-wide: some programmes are restricted to applicants at Danish institutions, others to the Nordic region or Europe, and some of the foundation’s largest strategic programmes are open internationally. Always check the specific call’s eligibility criteria rather than assuming a single foundation-wide rule.

How does the Novo Nordisk Foundation differ from Independent Research Fund Denmark (DFF)?

DFF is a Danish government agency distributing state research appropriations, generally restricted to research conducted in Denmark. The Novo Nordisk Foundation is a private philanthropic foundation funded by its investment portfolio, with a subject focus on health, sustainability, and life science, and eligibility tiers that in many cases extend beyond Denmark to the Nordic region, Europe, or worldwide.

What research areas does the foundation prioritise?

Its three published focus areas are health (biomedical and clinical research), sustainability, and the life science ecosystem, reflecting its origins as a foundation tied to insulin and biotechnology manufacturers.

Where should administrators check current programme details and deadlines?

Directly on novonordiskfonden.dk, which publishes current open calls, eligibility criteria, and deadlines. Programme names, funding amounts, and geographic eligibility change between cycles, so treat any secondary summary, including this guide, as a starting orientation rather than a substitute for the current call text.