Funding opportunities

Biotechnology Community-Building Award

Digital Life Norway announces a redesigned prize for community-building in Norwegian biotechnology. This is an evolution of the now-retired DLN Transdisciplinary Publication Award, presented from 2017 to 2021. The new prize aims to recognize and stimulate efforts to build deeper connections between academic and non-academic stakeholders to collectively tackle society’s grand challenges. 

A word cloud with words that relate to this award such as community-building, biotechnology, etc

Update April 2024: The Centre for Digital Life Norway received too few nominations to proceed with this year's Biotechnology Community-Building Award and have decided not to move forward with the award this year. However, if you are working on community-building activities, we want to hear from you! Drop us a note at contact@digitallifenorway.org

Biotechnology grows together with society. Societal challenges are complex and require us to reach beyond our traditional research boundaries. The Centre for Digital Life Norway encourages academic actors to work with non-academic actors and move research and innovation towards tackling grand challenges. 

How do we do that? Together with partners across our network, we encourage collaborating with non-academic stakeholders in the research itself with an active role — not only as research subject or data sources. This means that researchers include non-academic partners in decision-making.  

Read more about engagement with non-academic partners in the white paper by Hesjedal and Strand,“Transdisciplinarity in Digital Life Norway” (2021).  

 

Introducing the Biotechnology Community-Building Award 

Digital Life Norway is interested in recognizing attempts to move beyond collaboration within traditional networks (between researchers). That is why we are inviting the Norwegian biotechnology community to send in nominations for the first Biotechnology Community-Building Award! The Centre for Digital Life Norway will recognize one effort that took place during 2023 to build deeper connections between academic and non-academic stakeholders in Norwegian biotechnology. The prize is 10,000 NOK in project funds as well as recognition through our networks. 
 
Examples of non-academic stakeholders: User groups and patient groups, NGOs, science communicators and journalists, industry and small businesses, children and seniors, artists, members of the general public who may be impacted by the technology. (Note that collaboration between academic researchers and industry partners is not the aim of this call.)
Transdisciplinary research designs are demanding and time-consuming. Nevertheless, working with end-users, publics, NGOs, patients, governmental bodies, and other relevant stakeholders, in addition to diverse scientific disciplines, are forms of research that DLN is funded to realize by the Research Council of Norway. More importantly, transdisciplinary research opens for sustainable societal impact, higher innovation success rate, and relevance for industry stakeholders for life science in Norway.   

 

Apply here

Deadline: 31 March 2024 

 

Award criteria 

  • Any type of collaborative community activity in 2023 related to biotechnology will be considered. This means academic and non-academic partners working together. 
  • Examples could include workshops with diverse non-academic partners, inclusion of stakeholders in decision-making roles in research projects, communication activities aimed at general audiences, engaging user groups and stakeholders through innovation, artistic expressions by people who have participated in or been affected by biotechnology, and more. Collaboration between academic researchers and industry partners is not the aim of this call. Out-of-the-box ideas are welcome!
  •  Both one-time and ongoing activities will be considered; however, longer-term activities will be prioritized.  
  • The application must show relevance to biotechnology and life sciences.  
  • The applicant must be based in Norway; does not have to be affiliated with the Centre for Digital Life Norway. 
  • Applications will be evaluated by members of the DLN operational management team, DLN expert task force, and external experts. 
  • Self-nominations are accepted. One person may submit multiple entries. 

 

A little history 

From 2017 to 2021, DLN presented the Transdisciplinary Paper of the Year Award. Over time, we understood that most submissions to the award were multi- and interdisciplinary but did not demonstrate engagement with non-academic partners in biotechnology. Such collaborations might be more visible through other formats. Read more about the decision to discontinue and rethink the DLN Transdisciplinary Publication Award. The new Biotechnology Community-Building Award is a product of that redesign process. 

 

Questions?

Please contact Kam Sripada, Anamika Chatterjee or Anders Braarud Hanssen

Published Feb. 18, 2024 7:00 PM - Last modified Apr. 11, 2024 3:59 PM
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