The Villum Foundation has recently awarded a total of DKK 129 million through the Villum Experiment research program. The program is designed to support unorthodox research ideas in their early stages, when the risk of failure is relatively high, but the experiments hold the potential for major scientific breakthroughs. The projects were selected from 280 applications through an anonymized review process in which the panel assessed the originality and potential of the ideas alone, without considering the researchers' academic credentials.
Among the recipients are 26 researchers affiliated with DTU, each receiving a major research grant. The recipients are:
Marlene Mark Jensen, DTU Chemical Engineering, with the project 'MagnetAR – Magnetic Bacteria for Arsenic Recovery from Groundwater'.
Kresten Yvind, DTU Electro, with the project 'Power to the PIC'.
Jan Hidding, DTU Energy, with the project 'Extraordinary magnetometry using fault-tolerant daisy-chaining of one million sensors'.
Aleksandr Razumov, DTU Electro, with the project 'From Randomness to Determinism in Distributed Fiber-Optic Sensing'.
Babak Vosoughi Lahijani, DTU Electro, with the project 'Ultrafast photonic computing via Brownian motion and electromechanical transduction'.
Matteo Castagnola, DTU Physics, with the project 'Disentangling surface-molecule interactions with entangled plasmon spectroscopy'.
Mai Winstrup, DTU Space, with the project 'A SWOT-ICE Experiment: Revealing Hidden Ice Sheet Waterways from Space'.
Paul Kempen, DTU Nanolab, with the project 'Capturing the Molecular Point of No Return: Real-Time Liquid-Cell Electron Microscopy of Bacterial Surface Commitment'.
Michela La Bella, DTU Construct, with the project 'How can we make concrete structures self-healing? A multiscale and multimodal crystallographic investigation'.
Yang Liu, DTU Electro, with the project 'Discordant Harmony in Photonics: Quiet Microcombs via Strong Mode Coupling'.
Ming Chen, DTU Energy, with the project 'Testing the Designability of Molten-Salt Corrosion with a Digital Twin Reactor for Additively Manufactured Alloys'.
Apurv Dash, DTU Energy, with the project 'Elastic Ceramics: A New Mechanical State Beyond Brittleness'.
Long Cheng, DTU Electro, with the project 'Silencing the Electron: Pure Magnetic control of 2D antiferromagnets via the 'Dark' Side of Light'.
Ivano Eligio Castelli, DTU Energy, with the project 'Quasicrystals on Demand (QUASI)'.
Edmund Kelleher, DTU Electro, with the project 'Towards terahertz wave nano-imaging of single-bit spin textures (TWIST)'.
Christian Niclaas Saggau, DTU Electro, with the project 'Spectrally Programmable Chip Integrated Frequency Combs for Efficient High-Capacity Data Transfer'.
Stefania Serafin, DTU Engineering Technology, with the project 'AI of Human Experience: Exploring Generative Personal Models for Multisensory Interaction'.
Birgitte Dalsgaard Larsen, DTU Offshore, with the project 'Pressure Communication That Heals? Turning Degassing into Fault Seals for CO2 Storage'.
Rasmus Elkjær Jacobsen, DTU Space, with the project '3D Printed Lunar Regolith Extremely Large Aperture Antennas for Deep Space Observations'.
Anders E. Daugaard, DTU Chemical Engineering, with the project 'Water Free Pockets in Water: Turning Fermentation Broth into High Value Materials (HYDROPOC)'.
Ajanta Barh, DTU Electro, with the project 'Precision infrared spectroscopy reaches nanoscale (IR-nano)'.
Joao Otavio de Sousa Mendes, DTU Nanolab, with the project 'Unlocking superionic conductivity in unconventional materials systems'.
Anne Ladegaard Skov, DTU Chemical Engineering, with the project 'Suppression of crystallization in elastomers at low temperatures'.
Jef Canals-Riclot, DTU Energy, with the project 'Plant waste and sand based next generation K-ion batteries'.
Jakob Kibsgaard, DTU Physics, with the project 'Atomic Anchor - Stabilizing Dual- and Triple-Atom Catalysts for the Acidic Oxygen Evolution Reaction'.
Neri Bonciani, DTU Offshore, with the project 'Unseen but persistent: Can low-concentration discharges create arsenic hotspots on the seafloor?'.
Backed by these grants, the researchers now have the opportunity to push the boundaries of what is possible and test research ideas that could potentially transform their fields.
