Researcher Project for Young Talents (FRIPRO)
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Funding is only available for the topic Ground-breaking research (FRIPRO) under this call. Please read carefully the information under Relevant thematic areas and Ground-breaking research (expandable grey box).
Important dates
14 Feb 2023
Date call is made active
15 Mar 2023
Application submission deadline
END OF OCTOBER
Expected publication of application results
01 Nov 2023
Earliest permitted project start
01 Sep 2024
Latest permitted project start
31 Aug 2028
Latest permitted project completion
Important dates
Last updates
The call text is complete as of today.
Purpose
Funding is intended to give talented young researchers under the age of 40 in all disciplines and thematic areas the opportunity to pursue their ideas and lead a research project. This call is targeted towards researchers in the early stages of their careers, 2–7 years after defence of an approved doctorate, who have demonstrated the potential to conduct research of high scientific quality.
About the call for proposals
Grant applications will be accepted for projects in all disciplines and research areas, and funding is available for both basic and applied research projects.
You can only be the project manager for one application submitted for either a Researcher Project for Young Talents (this call), Researcher Project for Young Talents (thematic priority call with deadline 8 February 2023), Researcher Project for Scientific Renewal (thematic priority call with deadline 8 February 2023), Knowledge-building Project for Industry or Collaborative Project to meet Societal and Industry-related Challenges (deadline 15 February 2023).
It will be possible to create and fill in an application form from 14 February. See our video tutorial that tells you how to fill in the application form (in Norwegian).
The call is available in both Norwegian and English. The Norwegian-language call for proposals is the legally binding version.
We reserve the right to make possible changes to the call after we have received our letter of allocation from the Norwegian government for 2023.
Who is eligible to apply?
Only approved Norwegian research organisations may apply. See here for the list of approved Norwegian research organisations.
Who can participate in the project?
Requirements relating to the Project Owner
The organisation listed as the Project Owner in the application form must have approved the submission of the grant application to the Research Council.
Requirements relating to project managers
Experience requirements: You must have an approved doctorate and the period between the date of defence of your doctoral dissertation and the application deadline may be between two and seven years. You must have defended your dissertation no earlier than 15 March 2016 and no later than 15 March 2021.
Age requirement: You must be younger than 40 years old on the date of the application submission deadline. This means that you must have been born on or after 15 March 1983.
If more than seven years have passed since you defended your dissertation or if you were born before 15 March 1983, you may apply to subtract leaves of absence, compulsory military or civilian service or sick leave in accordance with our rules for subtracting time.
Rules for subtracting timeYou may apply to subtract time used in connection with statutory leaves of absence, compulsory military or civilian service (up to 12 months for both of these) or continuous full-time and/or part-time sick leave equal to at least eight weeks full-time absence. If you apply to subtract time in order to satisfy the experience requirement, the periods to be subtracted must have taken place after the doctoral defence. If you apply to subtract time to satisfy the age requirement, the periods to be subtracted must have taken place after you turned 18 years old. To be allowed to subtract time from the age and/or experience requirement, you are required to submit documentation of the time you are asking to subtract with your grant application You must also enter the time deduction in the application form. We accept documentation from the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV), physicians/health services and employers. Documentation from current or former supervisors is not sufficient. If you are providing documentation from an employer, it must come from the employer’s administration department, such as the HR department. The documentation must be submitted in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish or English, or must be accompanied by a certified translation into one of these languages. We follow the rules for leaves of absence set out in the Norwegian Working Environment Act, and you may apply to subtract time for any leaves of absence you would have been entitled to if you had lived in Norway at the time. For example, you may subtract time for parental leave in a country that does not have statutory parental leave, provided that you actually took parental leave. You must be able to document the leave as described above. |
- It is not possible to receive funding for a Researcher Project for Young Talents more than once.
- You must dedicate at least 25 per cent of a full-time position to the project for the duration of the project period.
- You must be employed for at least 50 per cent of a full-time position by the Project Owner (research organisation) for the entire duration of the project period.
You can only be the project manager for one application submitted for either a Researcher Project for Young Talents (this call), Researcher Project for Young Talents (thematic priority call with deadline 8 February 2023), Researcher Project for Scientific Renewal (thematic priority call with deadline 8 February 2023), Knowledge-building Project for Industry or Collaborative Project to meet Societal and Industry-related Challenges (deadline 15 February 2023).
Requirements relating to partners
Only approved Norwegian research organisations (see the section ‘Who is eligible to apply?’ above) and corresponding research organisations in other countries are eligible to be partners and to receive Researcher Project funding.
Other types of organisations, such as companies and other undertakings, may not be project partners in Researcher Projects.
Read more about partners here.
As Project Owner and/or partner in the project, you can engage subcontractors to deliver services and contribute to the completion of certain tasks in the project. Subcontractors cannot be granted any rights to project results. Organisations that are subject to the regulations governing public procurements must, in the normal manner, select subcontractors in accordance with these regulations. R&D providers cannot be included in the project.
A project participant may not be assigned two different roles in the project. This means that a sub-contractor for the project may not have the role of Project Owner or partner in the same project.
What can you seek funding for?
You may seek funding to cover actual costs that are necessary to execute the project. The Project Owner is to obtain information about costs from each project partner. These costs are to be entered in the cost plan under the relevant category.
Funding may be granted for the following costs:
- Payroll and indirect expenses, related to researcher time (including research fellowship positions) at the research organisations participating in the project. For doctoral research fellowships, this funding is limited to maximum three person-years. For post-doctoral research fellowships, this funding is limited to maximum four person-years.
- This encompasses operating and depreciation costs for scientific equipment and research infrastructure necessary for the execution of the project.
- Operating expenses, which comprise costs for other activities that are necessary to carry out R&D efforts under the project. Procurements from subcontractors that exceed NOK 100,000 must be specified.
- Research stay abroad for the project manager, relevant for the project, with a duration of minimum 3 and maximum 12 months. At the starting date of the research stay abroad, you must not have studied or worked for more than 12 months over the past three years in the country where the international host institution is located. Exceptions may be made to this rule if the international host institution has equipment, facilities and expertise that are not available in Norway or other countries that would be appropriate for a researcher stay. You will find detailed information on our website about research stays abroad.
You will find detailed and important information about what to enter in the project budget on our website.
If the project includes doctoral and post-doctoral research fellowships and there are concrete plans in place for research stays abroad for the fellowship holders, the costs of such stays may be included in the grant application. The Research Council has also issued a separate call for funding for Research Stays Abroad for Doctoral and Post-doctoral Fellows. The project manager may seek funding under that call in the course of the project period for research stays abroad for research fellows affiliated to the project.
Scope of funding
The Research Council can provide NOK 4–8 million in funding per project under this call. There are no requirements for own financing. If our lump-sum rates do not cover all the costs associated with recruitment positions in the university and university college sector or the institute sector, or researcher positions in the university and university college sector, the difference must be covered through own funding. For researcher positions in the institute sector you must use hourly rates reported by the institute.
Conditions for funding
The Research Council will not award funding that constitutes state aid under this call. This means that funding is only to go to your non-economic activity. We require a clear separation of accounts for the organisation’s economic and non-economic activities. Our requirements relating to allocation and disbursement of support for the first year and any pledges and payments for subsequent years are set out in the General Terms and Conditions for R&D Projects to be found on our information page What the contract involves.
If your project is awarded funding, the following must be in place before you submit your revised grant application:
- From 2022, all grant recipients that are research organisations or public sector bodies (Project Owners and partners) must have a Gender Equality Plan (GEP) available on their website. This must be in place when they sign the grant agreement for projects awarded funding from the Research Council. The requirement does not apply to the business sector, special interest organisations or the non-profit sector.
- The Research Council requires full and immediate open access to scientific publications; see Plan S – open access to publications.
- For all projects that manage research data, the Project Owner must ensure that a data management plan is drawn up and uploaded when the grant application is being revised. You will find more information about what the data management plan must contain here.
- The Project Owner is responsible for selecting which archiving solution(s) to use for storing research data generated during the project.
- For medical and health-related studies involving human participants, the Research Council stipulates special requirements and guidelines for registration and disclosure of medical and health-related studies involving human participants.
Relevant thematic areas for this call
The call encompasses all disciplines and research areas, and grant applications will be accepted for both basic and applied research projects. The amount of funding available may be subject to revision until the call for proposals opens for applications from 14 February.
Ground-breaking research
Funding is available to promote independent, bold and innovative research and scientific quality at the forefront of international research. Through FRIPRO (Ground-breaking research), we will fund both basic and applied research with the goal of generating scientific renewal, where project ideas are initiated by the researchers themselves.
We do not require FRIPRO projects to have the potential for societal impact. We will only assess applications in relation to this point if such potential impacts are described in the application.
Ranking of applications
The competition for FRIPRO funding is tough. The number of worthy applications we receive each year far exceeds the amount of funding available, and only a small percentage of even the best applications are granted funding.
For applications to be considered for FRIPRO funding, they must therefore meet a mark requirement. Only applications awarded a mark of 6 or 7 by the panels for all of the assessment criteria are eligible for funding. In 2023, we estimate that around one out of three of these applications will be granted funding.
Among the eligible applications, we will place most emphasis on the criteria Potential for advancing the state-of-the-art and Quality of R&D activities when selecting which projects to grant funding to.
Waiting period for all project managers for FRIPRO applications
As of autumn 2023, we will introduce open-ended calls for proposals and application processing in FRIPRO. This means that applicants may submit an application at any time during the year, and that applications are processed throughout the year. More information about this can be found on our FRIPRO information page.
With open-ended calls for proposals, we are also introducing a so-called waiting period, by which we mean a restriction on how often a researcher may be the project manager for an application for funding from FRIPRO. The waiting period for the project manager will be one year. The waiting period also applies to this call for proposals with application submission deadline 15 March 2023. This means that if you are the project manager for an application now, you may at the earliest apply for FRIPRO funding again 15 March 2024. The waiting period applies across all FRIPRO calls for proposals, unless otherwise stated in the call.
Submission restriction period for project managers for FRIPRO applications with an average mark below a given threshold
Starting with this call for proposals, we are introducing a submission restriction period, by which we mean that project managers for applications with an average mark below a certain threshold may not reapply for a given period of time. The purpose is to reduce the number of applications submitted before they have been sufficiently prepared, and to give project managers who do not succeed in receiving funding the necessary time to develop a stronger application before resubmitting. Submission restriction periods will also be introduced for Researcher Projects for Scientific Renewal under the FRIPRO call for proposals starting in autumn 2023. More information about this can be found on our FRIPRO information page.
For Researcher Projects for Young Talents, project managers for applications that receive an average mark of 4.5 or lower will be given a one-year restriction on submitting an application. The average is calculated from the marks given by the panel on the four assessment criteria. The submission restriction period will be added to the one-year waiting period. This means that if the grant application you submit for this call receives an average mark of 4.5 or lower, you can at the earliest be the project manager for an application submitted to a FRIPRO call 15 March 2025. The submission restriction period applies across all FRIPRO calls for proposals, unless otherwise stated in the call.
The restriction on submitting an application is not retroactive. Project managers for applications submitted in 2022 or earlier with an average mark below the threshold are therefore not subject to any restriction period and may submit an application now.
Contacts
Practical information
Requirements for this application type
Applications must be created and submitted via My RCN Web. You may revise and resubmit your grant application form multiple times up to the application submission deadline. We recommend that you submit your application as soon as you have filled in the grant application form and included all mandatory attachments. After the deadline, it is the most recently submitted version of the grant application that will be processed.
The application must meet the following requirements:
- The grant application and all attachments must be submitted in English.
- All mandatory attachments must be included.
- Requirements relating to the project manager and Project Owner (research organisation) must be satisfied.
- The project must start between 1.11.2023 and 1.9.2024.
Applications that do not satisfy the requirements listed above may be rejected.
Mandatory attachments
The mandatory attachments must be prepared using designated templates found at the end of the call.
- A project description, maximum 11 pages.
- A CV for the project manager, maximum four pages.
- If you apply to subtract time to satisfy the age or experience requirement, you must submit documentation of this. (To be uploaded under Attachments/Other items in the application form.)
Optional attachments
- CVs of key project participants not exceeding four pages each. You must use the CV template found at the end of the call.
- Applicants themselves are to decide which project participants are most important and in which cases it will be of significance to the review process to assess these participants’ qualifications.
- Applicants are free to enclose a short description of qualifications or propose up to three referees who are presumed to be qualified to review their grant proposal. The Research Council is not under any obligation to use the proposed referees but may use them as needed.
Attachments other than the mandatory and optional attachments specified above, as well as any links to websites in the grant application, will not be included in the application review process.
Be careful to upload the correct attachment type, as there are no technical restrictions on the type of templates that can be uploaded in the application form.
Assessment criteria
We assess applications in light of the objectives of the application type in question and on the basis of the following criteria:
Excellence – potential for advancing the state-of-the-art
• Scientific creativity and originality.
• Novelty and boldness of hypotheses or research questions.
• Potential for development of new knowledge beyond the current state-of-the-art, including significant theoretical, methodological, experimental or empirical advancement.
Excellence – quality of R&D activities
• Quality of the research questions, hypotheses and project objectives, and the extent to which they are clearly and adequately specified.
• Credibility and appropriateness of the theoretical approach, research design and use of scientific methods. Appropriate consideration of interdisciplinary approaches.
• The extent to which appropriate consideration has been given to ethical issues, safety issues, gender dimension in research content, and use of stakeholder/user knowledge if appropriate.
Impact
• Potential for academic impact:
The extent to which the planned outputs of the project address important present and/or future scientific challenges.
The extent to which the planned outputs are openly accessible to ensure reusability of the research outputs and enhance reproducibility.
• Potential for societal impact (if addressed by the applicant):
The extent to which the planned outputs of the project address UN Sustainable Development Goals or other important present and/or future societal challenges.
• The extent to which the potential impacts are clearly formulated and plausible.
Communication and exploitation
• The extent to which the appropriate open science practices are implemented as an integral part of the proposed project to ensure open sharing and wide distribution of research outputs.
• Quality and scope of communication and engagement activities with different target audiences, including relevant stakeholders/users.
Implementation
• The extent to which the project manager has relevant expertise and experience, and demonstrated ability to perform high-quality research (as appropriate to the career stage).
• The degree of complementarity of the participants and the extent to which the project group has the necessary expertise needed to undertake the research effectively.
The quality of the project organisation and management
• Effectiveness of the project organisation, including the extent to which resources assigned to work packages are aligned with project objectives and deliverables.
• Appropriateness of the allocation of tasks, ensuring that all participants have a valid role and adequate resources in the project to fulfil that role.
• Appropriateness of the proposed management structures and governance.
Administrative procedures
About the results of the application assessment process
- Total amount sought
- 3 288 558 000
- Amount awarded
- 285 047 000
- Total number of applications
- 417
- Number of approved applications
- 36
Project no. | Organization | Project title | Subject | Sought | Published |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 345356 | STIFTELSEN NORSK INSTITUTT FOR NATURFORSKNING NINA | Disentangling the effects of evolutionary and ecological processes on population growth | FRIMEDBIO | 8 000 000 | 20.10.2023 |
| 345334 | UNIVERSITETET I OSLO | NEVO: illuminating the dark cosmos | FRINATEK | 8 000 000 | 20.10.2023 |
| 345325 | UNIVERSITETET I OSLO | New advances in fish immunology: Characterization of a newly discovered lymphoid organ and its involvement in immune responses. | FRIMEDBIO | 8 000 000 | 20.10.2023 |
| 345279 | NORGES MILJØ- OG BIOVITENSKAPELIGE UNIVERSITET (NMBU) | PopFlow: a novel framework for animal movement, from individual life-trajectories to population fluxes | FRIMEDBIO | 6 858 000 | 20.10.2023 |
| 345272 | SINTEF AS | Data-driven optimization of industrial processes in time-varying environments | FRINATEK | 8 000 000 | 20.10.2023 |
| 345245 | NORGES TEKNISK-NATURVITENSKAPELIGE UNIVERSITET NTNU | From the ocean to sustainable biorefinery: the dormant potential of seaweed | FRIMEDBIO | 8 000 000 | 20.10.2023 |
| 345236 | STIFTELSEN HANDELSHØYSKOLEN BI | Firming Up Careers: Human Resource Policies and Inequality | FRIHUMSAM | 7 937 000 | 20.10.2023 |
| 345215 | NORGES TEKNISK-NATURVITENSKAPELIGE UNIVERSITET NTNU | High-Temperature Gasification for Material Recycling of Municipal Plastic Wastes | FRINATEK | 8 000 000 | 20.10.2023 |
| 345182 | NORGES TEKNISK-NATURVITENSKAPELIGE UNIVERSITET NTNU | Lipoprotein(a) – impact on cardiovascular disease, public health and potential as preventive health measure | FRIMEDBIO | 6 641 000 | 20.10.2023 |
| 345176 | CICERO SENTER FOR KLIMAFORSKNING | Greening Achilles heel sectors: Understanding environmental policy change in Latin American Primary industries | FRIHUMSAM | 8 000 000 | 20.10.2023 |
| 345156 | UNIVERSITETET I OSLO | Behavioral adjustments, income volatility and attention to the tax and benefits schedule | FRIHUMSAM | 7 997 000 | 20.10.2023 |
| 345150 | RISE PFI AS | Cellulose based block polymers for self-assembling layered structures | FRINATEK | 8 000 000 | 20.10.2023 |
| 345136 | UNIVERSITETET I TROMSØ - NORGES ARKTISKE UNIVERSITET | 5D quantitative microscopy for real-time monitoring of Engineered Heart Tissue | FRIMEDBIO | 8 000 000 | 20.10.2023 |
| 345106 | FOLKEHELSEINSTITUTTET | YoungPsych: Drivers and Implications of the Mental Health Decline among the Young | FRIMEDBIO | 7 990 000 | 20.10.2023 |
| 345098 | UNIVERSITETET I OSLO | Deciphering endocannabinoid stress buffering in humans: Mechanistic and clinical investigations | FRIMEDBIO | 8 000 000 | 20.10.2023 |
| 345079 | NORGES MILJØ- OG BIOVITENSKAPELIGE UNIVERSITET (NMBU) | Porous electrode charging | FRINATEK | 7 999 000 | 20.10.2023 |
| 345077 | NORSK INSTITUTT FOR VANNFORSKNING | PlAsTic effecTs on the Exchanges of nutRients and biological informatioN in aquatic ecosystems | FRIMEDBIO | 7 995 000 | 20.10.2023 |
| 345065 | UNIVERSITETET I OSLO | Zinc transport regulation through histidine methylation | FRIMEDBIO | 8 000 000 | 20.10.2023 |
| 345062 | UNIVERSITETET I BERGEN | Towards the design of covalent RNA ligands: Establishing a toolbox of warheads for covalent targeting of RNA | FRIMEDBIO | 8 000 000 | 20.10.2023 |
| 345056 | UNIVERSITETET I OSLO | OMNIBODY: Enabling the omni-directional optimization of antibodies. | FRIMEDBIO | 8 000 000 | 20.10.2023 |
| 345055 | STIFTELSEN NANSEN SENTER FOR MILJØ OG FJERNMÅLING | Forecasting Wave impact as Arctic sea ice declines | FRINATEK | 7 637 000 | 20.10.2023 |
| 345017 | UNIVERSITETET I TROMSØ - NORGES ARKTISKE UNIVERSITET | Relational deep learning for energy analytics | FRINATEK | 8 000 000 | 20.10.2023 |
| 345013 | HØGSKULEN PÅ VESTLANDET | "Like Islands in a Sea of Sand. Understanding the Silk Roads of Late Antiquity as a layered network model." | FRIHUMSAM | 7 999 000 | 20.10.2023 |
| 345008 | UNIVERSITETET I OSLO | Uncovering the coupled fluid and solid dynamics driving highly-localized rupture in geomaterials (UNLOC) | FRINATEK | 8 000 000 | 20.10.2023 |
| 344999 | UNIVERSITETET I TROMSØ - NORGES ARKTISKE UNIVERSITET | SHRINK – Is Global Warming Shrinking Soil Microorganisms? | FRIMEDBIO | 8 000 000 | 20.10.2023 |
| 344994 | FOLKEHELSEINSTITUTTET | Helpful or harmful: The effects of criminal justice system contact on victims of sexual and physical violence | FRIHUMSAM | 8 000 000 | 20.10.2023 |
| 344993 | UNIVERSITETET I OSLO | Harnessing Hydrogen by Optimized Ion-Conductive Metal-Organic Frameworks | FRINATEK | 8 000 000 | 20.10.2023 |
| 344979 | NORGES HANDELSHØYSKOLE | Media Bias and Political Polarization | FRIHUMSAM | 8 000 000 | 20.10.2023 |
| 344951 | UNIVERSITETET I OSLO | Uncovering the paths to pragmatic resilience | FRIHUMSAM | 7 995 000 | 20.10.2023 |
| 344942 | UNIVERSITETET I OSLO | T-cell-mediated proinflammatory cell death and lysis in cancer | FRIMEDBIO | 8 000 000 | 20.10.2023 |
| 344934 | UNIVERSITETET I OSLO | CosmoglobeHD: Mapping the universe from the Milky Way to the Big Bang in high resolution | FRINATEK | 8 000 000 | 20.10.2023 |
| 344918 | CICERO SENTER FOR KLIMAFORSKNING | DRIP - DRought ending in Intensified Precipitation | FRINATEK | 8 000 000 | 20.10.2023 |
| 344903 | NORSK UTENRIKSPOLITISK INSTITUTT | Rebundling sovereignty over local nature in global governance | FRIHUMSAM | 7 999 000 | 20.10.2023 |
| 344899 | UNIVERSITETET I OSLO | HE-POP: Studying the Health Effects of Persistent Organic Pollutants, Using Mass Spectrometry, Organoids, and Organ-On-A-Chip | FRIMEDBIO | 8 000 000 | 20.10.2023 |
| 344868 | UNIVERSITETET I STAVANGER | Sticking stones: rediscovering medieval wood tar adhesives for stone conservation | FRIHUMSAM | 8 000 000 | 20.10.2023 |
| 344828 | UNIVERSITETET I OSLO | REACTivity under confinement: in-situ mineral growth within nano- and microscale volumes. | FRINATEK | 8 000 000 | 20.10.2023 |
Messages at time of print 24 April 2024, 20:22 CEST