To apply for a 2-year 50%-financed Industrial postdoctoral fellowship, the following requirements must be fulfilled: 

• Only postdoctoral candidates may apply for a postdoctoral fellowship. 
• You must have a PhD degree, or the PhD thesis must be accepted for defense at the time of grant notification.*
• Any previous employment as a postdoctoral fellow must not have exceeded three years in total (counted as Full-Time Employment, FTE) at the time of submission of the application. Please note that you can only be employed as a postdoctoral fellow for a maximum of four years at the same institution (including the potential DDEA postdoctoral fellowship) according to the Ministry of Higher Education and Science’s Memorandum on Job Structure For Academic Staff at Universities (pdf) 
• Your principal supervisor must be employed at the Danish research institution or at the private life-science company in Denmark where you will be employed and carry out your project.  

Please also consult our Funding Terms.

* If you do not yet have a PhD degree, you should enclose a statement from the principal supervisor of your PhD thesis indicating when the thesis will be handed in and stating when the defense is expected to take place. Your PhD thesis must be accepted for defense at the time of grant notification, which will be 26 November 2026. Within two weeks of grant notification, you must submit documentation from your PhD school verifying thesis acceptance for defense and the scheduled defense date. You must submit your PhD degree certificate to the DDEA Secretariat within six months of grant notification. Failure to obtain the PhD degree within this period, or if the PhD is not awarded, will result in withdrawal of the fellowship. 

Applications must be written in English and submitted via our online application form. 

Please note that you must be logged in to the DDEA Grant Website to submit an application. You can create an account here. 

You can edit and review your data before the final submission.
After submitting your final application, you will receive an email acknowledging receipt of your application. If you do not receive this email, please contact the DDEA Secretariat at ouh.ddea@rsyd.dk to make sure that your application has been successfully submitted. Please note that the date of submission stated in the email is the date when you created the application. 

Applicants are required to detail the contributions of both the academic partner and the life-science industry partner and must clearly delineate the collaboration between them in their application (see item 5 below). Documentation for collaboration agreements should be included (see item 12 below).  

You must upload your application in a single PDF file!  
 
The application should include the following documents, which should be numbered as specified below:  

0. Title page: Name of applicant, project title, name and affiliation of your principal supervisor, and name of collaborating company.

1. Abstract in English (half an A4 page) 

2. Lay abstract in Danish (half an A4 page). If you do not speak Danish, please ask your principal supervisor to assist you in preparing the abstract. Please note that the lay abstract must be written specifically for a Danish lay audience – that is, in language understandable to non-specialists – and must not be a direct translation of the English abstract. 

3. Project description including:

• Specific aims
• Background and significance of the project to the research area
• Preliminary studies (if applicable)
• Research design and methods
• Time schedule
• Literature cited

The page limit for the project description is five pages (font size 12, single spacing) including figures and tables but excluding references. We will not consider applications with project descriptions exceeding the page limit. 

4. Motivation letter (half an A4 page) including an explanation of why you are the right candidate to complete the project and your future career plans. If you plan to continue your postdoctoral studies in the same department/institution as you conducted your PhD studies, please include a description of the advantages of continuing your studies in the same research environment.

5. A short description (one to two A4 pages) on how your research project relates to the four DDEA funding focus areas*: Internationalisation, interdisciplinarity, collaboration across sectors, and patient and/or public involvement (in four separate paragraphs). Importantly, the reviewers will also assess this part.  

In the paragraph regarding ‘collaboration across sectors’ you must include a description of the collaboration between the academic partner and the life-science industry partner including the purpose of the collaboration and why it is important for the project, a description of the contributions of each partner (e.g. funding, access to facilities or specific technologies), and how the collaboration may support your career development. Documentation for collaboration agreements should be included (item 12).  

6. Recommendation letter and acceptance from your principal supervisor and the life-science industry partner including: 

• Description of the research environment where you will carry out the postdoctoral project and how this will contribute to a clear plan for career development for you as postdoctoral fellow. 
• Confirmation that you can carry out the postdoctoral project at the department where your principal supervisor is employed and/or at the private life-science company (if relevant). 

7. Your Curriculum Vitae (including teaching experience, oral and poster presentations at important relevant conferences, assessment and review activities, received grants and/or awards, mobility and international experience) Please ensure that all academic appointments after completion of your PhD are clearly listed, including exact job titles and the corresponding years of employment. (max. two A4 pages).

8. Your publication list including journal impact factor and number of first author publications (no page limit).

9. Copy of your master’s degree certificate including grades.

10. Copy of your PhD diploma or statement from your principal supervisor

11. Short Curriculum Vitae of your principal supervisor (max. two A4 pages).

12. Other relevant documents e.g. documentation for collaboration agreements between the academic and life-science industry partners, change of research environment and/or studies abroad (email correspondence is sufficient documentation).

* The four funding focus areas of DDEA:

• International collaboration: Such as study abroad; recruitment from abroad; and/or affiliation of collaborators from abroad. The collaboration can be documented by e.g. a collaboration agreement or an email from the collaborator describing the nature of the collaboration. The international collaboration must create actual value for the project and the applicant, and it should therefore be incorporated in the project from the beginning. 

• Interdisciplinary collaboration: Such as affiliation of collaborators from other research disciplines e.g. basic science, clinical science, epidemiology, psychology; and/or integration of different research disciplines in the project. The collaboration must be described in the research plan with regard to the description of the hypothesis, methods and/or idea development. The collaboration should result in synergy between the collaborators. 

• Collaboration across sectors: Such as affiliation of collaborators from other sectors e.g. industry, general practice, university hospitals; formalized agreements with collaborators from other sectors; and/or change of research/work environment in other sectors. The collaboration can be documented by joint publications based on affiliation and educational background of authors, joint and funded applications, patent applications or spin-off companies. The collaboration should result in synergy between the collaborators. 

• Patient and/or public involvement (PPI): The application should include a separate paragraph that reflects on and outlines explicit plans and strategies for PPI in the study. It should be discussed how PPI can improve and contribute to this particular study and detail the benefits and relevance of the study for patients/users and society. PPI requires different approaches in various contexts, such as basic research, epidemiological research, and clinical research. Given the diverse nature of research disciplines and methodologies, the extent and manner of meaningful PPI will vary in applications from different research areas. However, it is imperative that all applications adhere to a baseline level of PPI, as outlined in our Information about the DDEA Funding Focus Areas. 

Evaluation and Selection 

The DDEA Secretariat will process all incoming applications. Applications not fulfilling the eligibility criteria and/or technical requirements will not be considered.  

All eligible applications will be submitted to the DDEA Grant Review Committee for a scientific evaluation. Evaluation of the applications will consider four evaluation criteria: 1) the applicant; 2) the project; 3) the research environment; and 4) the DDEA four funding focus areas: internationalisation, interdisciplinarity, collaboration across sectors, and patient and/or public involvement. 

For further information about the evaluation procedure, selection process and evaluation criteria (including the DDEA funding focus areas), we refer to the Guidelines for the DDEA grant review process and evaluation criteria for grants.   

Conflict of interest 

To ensure that we avoid potential conflicts of interest in the allocation of reviewers for the evaluation of your application, we ask you to indicate whether your PI or Co-PI (or any other members of your project team) has a conflict of interest with any of the international reviewers on the DDEA Grant Review Committee. Examples of conflicts of interest include joint publications or close collaborations within the last five years.

Please consult the list of members of the DDEA Grant Review Committee before submitting your application and indicate in the application form whether any conflicts of interest exist. 

Funding Terms 

We will fund the postdoctoral fellowship up to an amount of DKK 600,000 in total, partly covering your salary during the two-year project period. 

Please note that we do not cover overhead or operating expenses. 

Some part of the remaining funding must come from the life-science industry.  

We grant a 2-year 50%-financed Industrial postdoctoral fellowship provided that the funding for the remaining 50% financing is assured. The documentation of the remaining 50% financing in terms of a grant letter or the like (e.g. signed guarantee from principal supervisor, head of department, or private company), must be submitted to the DDEA Secretariat at the latest 12 months after grant notification. Otherwise, the fellowship grant will be withdrawn. 

If you receive another grant covering salary for the same project as described in your application to DDEA (except for the remaining 50% that you must find other funding for), we reserve the right to withdraw your postdoctoral fellowship grant or part of it. 

Employment 

Employment must take place at a Danish research institution or at a life-science company in Denmark and will last for two years. Employment must take place within 12 months after grant notification. Your host institution will be responsible for the employment of you as a postdoctoral fellow. We will have no influence on the employment other than allocating the grant to your host institution. 

Please note that you cannot transfer the DDEA postdoctoral fellowship into an assistant professor or an associate professor position at any time. 

Commitment to DDEA 

As a DDEA grant recipient, we expect you to be an ambassador for DDEA, teach at courses and seminars offered by DDEA, participate in the DDEA activities in general, and submit an annual reporting of activities and research results deriving from the project. 

For further information about the Industrial Postdoctoral Fellowships, please contact Managing Director Tore Christiansen at tore.christiansen@rsyd.dk, tel. +45 2964 6764 or Management Assistant Mette Kjær Faurskov at mette.kjaer.faurskov@rsyd.dk, tel. +45 2491 5676. 

For information about user login to the DDEA Grant Website, please contact the DDEA Secretariat at ouh.ddea@rsyd.dk or Office Assistant Mette Roed at tel. +45 2466 9802.