National graduate school in bioeconomy

At Formas, we care about ensuring that the projects we fund are carried out in a way that maximises positive and minimises negative impacts on the environment and climate. We therefore encourage you to design your project so that collaboration takes place primarily through digital meeting formats and that any necessary travel is carried out in the most climate-smart way possible. We also suggest that you include measures to minimise energy use and other resource consumption, emissions and waste in your project planning. However, this will not be part of the assessment of your application.

All maximum character limits refer to characters including spaces. It is recommended to use the Arial font in font size 12 for the information entered in all text boxes.

Mandatory attachments (see Attachments) must be completed and attached.

The application must contain a clear description of the project in the following sections:

Basic information

• Requested number of years/months for the project.
• Start month 2026-11-01, cannot be changed
• Project title in Swedish and English (200 characters including spaces)
• Popular science description in Swedish (4 500 characters including spaces). The popular science description will, if the project is granted funding, be published in open project databases without a confidentiality check. The content of this field should therefore not contain sensitive information.
• Summary in Swedish and English (1 500 characters including spaces each). The project summaries will, if the project is granted funding, be published in open project databases without a confidentiality check. The content of these fields should therefore not contain sensitive information.

Description of the Graduate School

Purpose and objectives (maximum 30 000 characters including spaces).

Describe how the graduate school fulfils the purpose and objectives of the call.

Describe the overarching questions, based on challenges relevant to society and business, that the graduate school will address, and how this contributes to fulfilling the aims and objectives of the call in both the short and long term. The description should be more specific for the first five years and only general for the subsequent five.

Describe how the research school's overarching questions develop, deepen and challenge the current state of knowledge/research in the area.

Describe how the overarching questions can address interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral challenges.

Describe the focus of the planned PhD projects (at a general level), preliminary questions and how these contribute to the aims and objectives of the call.

Describe how the PhD projects complement each other and contribute to the overarching questions of the research school.

Describe how the graduate school ensures a high scientific quality of PhD projects, courses and other activities.

Describe how the graduate school ensures business relevance.

Implementation (maximum 40 000 characters including spaces).

Describe the research environments included in the graduate school. Describe the environments in terms of scientific position and focus of ongoing research. Describe, in particular, how the environments can contribute to the aims, objectives and development of the graduate school.

Describe how the activities of the graduate school will be conducted. Include, for example, plans for the design of PhD projects, recruitment of PhD students, basis for recruitment, joint activities, supervision, and a general activity and time schedule.

Describe the graduate school's planned course programme. Describe how PhD courses will be developed within the framework of the graduate school and existing PhD courses that potentially can be included in the graduate school's course programme.

Describe other planned activities of the research school, their purpose and link to the research school's objectives. These may include, for example, joint group activities such as annual meetings, kick-off meetings, workshops, conferences or communication activities.

Describe how interaction with the business sector in general and Biosociety's programme office in particular, as well as with other relevant societal actors, will take place.

Describe how the participation of industry and other stakeholders will be promoted.

Describe the plans for how HEIs other than the consortium partners will be involved in the planning and implementation of courses and PhD projects.

Describe the graduate school's efforts to promote the cross-sectoral and interdisciplinary nature of the graduate school.

Describe the graduate school's development and progression during the implementation period. The description should focus on the first five years but also show planning for all ten years.

Include an overview risk analysis to identify obstacles and pitfalls and describe how these can be addressed.

Actors (maximum 30 000 characters including spaces)

Describe and justify the composition, organisation, management and staffing of the consortium.

Describe the competences, capacities and previous relevant experiences of the consortium. Describe the role and contribution of key persons and justify the level of activity of each participant.

Describe the consortium's knowledge of both current research frontiers within the bioeconomy and the knowledge needs of industry, as well as the consortium's understanding of the area's various societal benefits. Describe how the parties complement each other and how this contributes to achieving the aims and objectives of the graduate school.

Specify which companies and other stakeholders that plan to participate in the graduate school, and their role, needs and contributions. Describe how the graduate school will ensure the involvement and participation of the business sector in the way described in the call.

Describe how the business sector and other stakeholders have been involved in the design of the graduate school and its various components.

Describe the consortium's network with relevant parts from the business sector and other societal actors.

Describe how the graduate school addresses issues of gender equality, equal treatment and diversity, where relevant.

Describe and motivate the composition and work of the reference group and how it strengthens the graduate school.

Societal relevance (maximum 20 000 characters including spaces).

Describe how the graduate school develops and strengthens the Swedish bioeconomy and its various societal benefits in accordance with the purpose of the call.

Describe how the business sector is strengthened through its participation and involvement in the graduate school and how it contributes to the graduate school's goal of increasing the number of people with research expertise in the business sector.

Describe how the graduate school strengthens research and the supply of expertise in both the short and long term in strategic issues of importance to both academia and industry in the area.

References included in the running text under the points above are entered in a separate field (maximum 5000 characters including spaces).

Budget and other information

The project's costs, funding and other information about all organisations participating in the application should be presented in Prisma. Please note that the budget and budget specification should be written in English, a Swedish budget specification is not submitted for translation but is reviewed by the international review panel as it is. In Prisma, the entire amount applied for is written out, for example, SEK 1 million is written: SEK 1 000 000.

The following information must be included in the project budget:

Information on the main applicant organisation and each project partner

This is mandatory information that must be filled in per party for all partners in the project. The information is collected and filled in by the main applicant. The lead applicant's organisation must be the same one indicated as the administrating organisation.

• Name of the organisation
• Organisation number
• Address, postcode, post town, country
• Annual turnover (refers to the total turnover or sales of the university, university college, institute, company or organisation in the current tax year, expressed in figures, e.g. 3 500 000)
• Balance sheet total (refers to the sum of the asset side or the sum of liabilities and equity in a company's or organisation's balance sheet, expressed in figures, e.g. 5 500 000)
• Number of employees
• Contact person
• E-mail of contact person
• Name of workplace, address, postcode, post town, country where the majority of the work will be carried out.

Costs

Personnel costs for researchers, technicians and other staff to the extent that they work on the project. For employees of a university, university college or research institute, the amount may never exceed one hundred per cent of a full-time position. This also means that someone who is already receiving full salary funding from any funder cannot receive additional funds for salary. Researchers who are full-time retired cannot receive funding for their own salary.

Equipment, buildings and land to the extent and for the duration that they are used for the project. If instruments and equipment are not used throughout the lifetime of the project, only the depreciation costs corresponding to the lifetime of the research project, calculated on the basis of generally accepted accounting principles, are considered eligible. For buildings, only depreciation costs corresponding to the life cycle of the research project, calculated on the basis of generally accepted accounting principles, are considered eligible. For land, costs of transfer on commercial terms or actual capital costs are eligible.

Costs of consultants and licences, etc., purchased or rented from external sources on market terms, as well as costs of consultancy and equivalent services used exclusively for the research activity.

Other direct costs, such as costs of materials, inputs and similar products, incurred as a direct result of a project. Other direct costs also include travel and conferences, as well as publication in journals and databases that apply open access. Formas only grants funding for certain author fees. Read more under the heading Costs of publishing External link..

Indirect costs:

Indirect costs are allocated according to three levels:

1. HEIs may add indirect costs according to the full cost principle they apply. In their books, HEIs only need to itemise eligible costs corresponding to the amount of the grant.
2. the following organisations, when participating in the project with non-financial activities, may claim actual indirect costs up to a maximum of 45% of their eligible personnel costs

2.1 research organisations that are

• limited liability companies or partnerships in which the State exercises direct or indirect legal control, or
• foundations in which the government appoints one or more board members

2.2 government agencies (other than HEIs) that are required by their instructions to conduct their own research,

The condition of a maximum of 45% applies provided that the organisation receives funds by government decision to conduct independent research. If the organisation also carries out economic activities such as contract research, these activities must be reported separately. If the organisation participates in the project with economic activities, the condition in 3) below applies.

3. Other project partners may claim actual indirect costs, but no more than an amount corresponding to 30% of their eligible personnel costs.

Formas does not grant funding for overheads on costs that you write off for equipment or for premises.

Financing

Four types of financing can be specified in the application:

• Grant applied for from Formas: Indicates the amount applied for from Formas . The amount cannot exceed total costs. If the amount applied for is less than the total costs, the remaining amount will be automatically calculated and reported under “Own funding”.
• Other support (public): If funds for related projects have been obtained with funding from Formas or another public funding body.
• Other support (private): If funds from another private company or organisation contribute funding to the project.
• Own financing: If the project partner contributes with its own funding to the project, this is automatically calculated in the field for own funding.

Justification of personnel costs in the budget

Here you specify the average hourly cost of budgeted personnel costs. Personnel costs refer to salaries including social security contributions and other compulsory contributions linked to salaries. (Maximum 500 characters including spaces.)

Budget specification

Here you specify the budget in words. Give a brief justification for the costs specified in the budget. A description of the total budget of the project, including any funding from other sources, should also be included. (Maximum of 9000 characters including spaces.)

In the appendix Overall cost distribution, you must describe a plan for how the costs will be distributed between the different parts of the graduate school, see Mandatory appendices.

Ethics

You must state whether there are specific ethical aspects to the project. You must then describe what the ethical issues in question are and how you plan to deal with them. For example, this could be research that utilises personal data or research that involves experiments on humans or animals.

If your research involves humans, human tissue or sensitive personal data, you will need to submit an application for ethical review to the Ethical Review Authority and have it approved. If you are conducting experiments on animals, you will also need approval from an animal ethics committee. You can apply for this in the Swedish Board of Agriculture's e-service.

You must state in your application whether or not you have a current ethical approval. If you do not, and your application is granted funding, you must have ethical approval before the described experiments begin.

If your research is not expected to involve anything that requires ethical approval, you should state this, and justify how and why.

Classifications

Formas uses the project's classifications in analyses and documentation at an overall level. The classifications are made by the applicant specifying the subject area, research topic (SCB code), at least one global sustainable development goal to which the project can contribute, and keywords.

• Subject area. Select a minimum of one and a maximum of three subject areas and add a subheading.
• Research topic (SCB code). Select a minimum of one and a maximum of three research topics and two sublevels that create the merged code.
• Global Sustainable Development Goals. Specify at least one and up to three global sustainable development goals that the project can contribute to in order of priority according to degree of relevance. More on the meaning of the goals. External link.
• Please provide at least one and up to three keywords that describe the project.

Administrating organisation - the organisation receiving the grant

Only universities, university colleges and research institutes can submit an application under this call. The main applicant organisation will be the administrating organisation.

• Select the administrating organisation from the drop-down list.
• Select your project site in the drop-down list.

CV

The project leader and participating researchers retrieve the information from their respective personal accounts in Prisma and add it to the application. Applicants should check in good time that their CV in Prisma is complete and up-to-date. If the participating researcher has not accepted the invitation to participate or has not filled in the mandatory fields correctly, the main applicant will not be able to complete the registration of the application. Participants who are not co-applicants do not have the possibility to attach CV information, instead their competence in the project should be described in the research programme.

The following CV information should be added to the application:

Education

• Research education
• Education at undergraduate and graduate level

Work history

• Current employment and longer relevant previous employment
• Postdoctoral visits
• Research exchanges relevant to the research described
• Any longer breaks in research (e.g. parental leave, illness, military or political service)

Qualifications and honours:

• Associate professorship (docentship)
• Supervised persons: PhD students, postdocs, and master thesis students; Add as individual and/or add as group. When adding a group, indicate the total number for each category. When adding individuals, name the most relevant ones (max 10).
• Funding obtained in competition, indicate the most relevant ones (max 10).
• Prizes and awards, indicate the most relevant (max 10).
• Other qualifications including publication summary:
  • Under other merits, additional merits relevant to the application should be listed, such as popular science publications and documented experience of collaboration and research communication (max 10).
  • The main applicant and participating researchers should also provide a brief summary of their publication history, for the last five-year period and in total if the applicant's active research period is longer than five years (max 800 characters including spaces). This summary should include the following:
    • Number of publications of different types (such as articles in peer-reviewed journals, book chapters, books and other monographs, conference papers, popular science contributions)
    • The summary should not include information on Journal Impact Factors or any other type of metric used to rank publishers or journals.

Publications

Maximum 10 publications per researcher

Mandatory appendices

Save each appendix as a PDF file (maximum 10 MB per appendix) and upload under mandatory appendices in Prisma. Only PDF files can be uploaded in Prisma.

Appendix 1. Planned PhD student projects in admission round 1

Describe the intended distribution between academic and industrial PhD students.

Provide a table outlining the planned PhD student projects for the first admission round. The table shall state at which HEI each PhD student is planned to be admitted, which company/industry/other actor is participating in the PhD project, and whether it is planned to be carried out by an academic or industrial PhD student. At the time of application, a number of the PhD projects must be anchored in the business sector, which can also be documented by the business sector through letters of support. The table may also contain ideas for suitable and possible PhD student projects where further anchoring and design together with the business sector will take place after the application has been approved.

Names of PhD students and detailed implementation plans need not be included in the application. If the application is approved, this must be reported to Formas at a later stage.

Appendix 2. Overall cost distribution

Attach an outline showing the expected overall financing of the graduate school, including co-funding from the business sector (and any other actors). It should show how costs have been budgeted, in total, for the coordination function, the PhD student projects and expected co-funding from industry, both in cash and in-kind.

There is no template for this appendix, but it must be shown how the funding is distributed between the categories of coordination function, PhD student projects and expected co-funding. The subheadings for each category can be chosen and adapted by the applicant as needed, and specify/exemplify what has been included in each subcategory, but suggestions for subheadings are:

• Salaries: may include, for example, salaries for coordination, administration, PhD students, supervisors/mentors, organisation of courses. Describe which salary costs are included in this category.
• Activities: may include, for example, costs for meetings, seminars, courses, lectures and other research school-wide activities. Describe the activities included in this category.
• Other: may include, for example, costs for premises, equipment, etc. Describe the costs included in this category.

Appendix 3. Certificates from the consortium partners

Certificates from the consortium partners confirming the hosting of the respective participation in the research school, confirming the priority and relevance of the research school for the organisation, and certifying that the necessary resources will be made available must be attached to the application. The certificates must be signed by the vice chancellor or the CEO.

The certificates must be compiled into one (1) pdf document for uploading.

Appendix 4. Letters of support from industry and other organisations

In order to clearly demonstrate the business relevance of the application, letters of support from the business sector and, where applicable, other organisations, must be attached. These should include the expected results and benefits of participation; planned activities and participation in the project's implementation; and ability to contribute in accordance with the project plan and budget. The letters of support must be signed by the Head of Research or equivalent authorised to sign such documents.

The certificates must be compiled into one (1) pdf document for uploading.

Optional appendices

Optional appendix 1. If figures, images or tables are required, these can be uploaded as one (1) pdf document (maximum 10 MB).

Optional appendix 2. If additional CVs are needed (if not available through Prisma) they can be uploaded as one (1) pdf document (maximum 10 MB).

Formas regularly transfers data from approved applications to the Swecris External link. database, which is managed by the Swedish Research Council on behalf of the government. The following data from approved applications is transferred to Swecris and made available as open data:

• Project title in Swedish
• Project title in English
• Summary in Swedish
• Summary in English
• Estimated project duration (start date and end date)
• Total amount granted
• Name of coordinating organisation in Swedish
• Name of coordinating organisation in English
• Organisation number of coordinating organisation
• Research subject SCB code
• Names of applicants and participants
• Gender of applicants and participants
• ORCID of applicants and participants.