Explore our grantees and awardees

Grant category: LEO Foundation Visiting Researchers

Year: 2025

Geography: Denmark

Grant category: LEO Foundation Dr Abildgaard Fellowships

Year: 2025

Geography: Denmark

The LEO Foundation Dr Abildgaard Fellows received a two-year leadership coaching program as an add-on grant to their existing fellowship.

The LEO Foundation Fellows Leadership Coaching Program (LCP) will help identifying the fellow’s key strengths as well as their potential key leadership obstacles and situations they find most challenging within leadership – and how to handle these situations. During the coaching sessions they will identify and train new leadership skills going forward which can help them perform even better.

Potential themes for the leadership coaching sessions could be elements from the following sections:

• Learn more about your leadership style and get the best out of it
• Setting up – and leading the team
• Stakeholder Management
• Mentoring

Grant category: Education and Awareness Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: Denmark

Grant category: Education and Awareness Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: Denmark

Grant category: Education and Awareness Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: Denmark

Grant category: Education and Awareness Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: Denmark

The project is a nation-wide public science engagement initiative in relation to the solar eclipse on 12 August 2026. Through live TV broadcasting, public events, and collaborations with primary and lower secondary schools on educational material, it will engage all of Denmark in the wonders of astronomy and astrophysics and expose them to relevant scientists and hands-on experiments.

Grant category: Education and Awareness Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: Denmark

Danmarks Naturfagslærerforening will create Build-a-baby, an interactive 90-minute classroom game on genetics, in partnership with Copenhagen Game Lab. Target group is lower secondary school. Students will “build babies” by combining genes, environmental factors, and life events affecting health and pass traits on to the next generation. Focus is on stimulating knowledge and reflection on health, risk factors, inheritance, and lifestyle. The game includes teacher guides, supports biology curriculum milestones, and will be free for educators nationwide with potential for expansion to other Nordic countries.

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: Denmark

Patients with atopic dermatitis (AD) are much more likely to develop other environmental (pollen, dust mites) or food allergies, but we do not understand why. Our immune system usually ignores most proteins in contact with the skin, yet some people, have a strong reaction. With this project we aim to determine whether human and microbe enzymes on AD-affected skin can turn harmless proteins into allergens by cutting them or chemically modifying them. We will use lab-grown human skin models and cutting-edge tools to see how bacteria and damaged skin cells alter proteins like those from pollen, dust mites, of peanut and whether these changes make them more likely to trigger allergic reactions. We will also study how these modified proteins are recognised by the immune system. The results could lead to better ways to prevent allergies in people with AD, such as treatments that block harmful enzymes, protect the skin barrier, or train the immune system to tolerate allergens.

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: Denmark

Chronic urticaria, also known as chronic hives, is a common skin condition causing itchy rashes and swelling, considerably impacting the quality of life. Although common, the exact cause remains unknown. We will study the proteins involved in chronic urticaria to better understand the underlying disease mechanisms and hopefully find new treatment options. We will use a specialized technique called mass spectrometry to measure the proteins in skin samples from patients with hives and healthy controls. With this approach we can determine which proteins are altered in affected skin, offering new insights into the underlying causes of the condition. Additionally, we will study how immune cells and nerve signals affect the disease by conducting laboratory experiments. By understanding the biology of chronic urticaria better, we hope to contribute to the development of more effective and targeted treatments that could help people suffering from this challenging condition.

Grant category: Research Grants

Year: 2025

Geography: Denmark

Pathogens such as Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa are commonly associated with non-healing and aggravated wounds, since they can colonize and invade host tissues, and many times cause life threatening conditions such as sepsis. Resistance to the available antibiotic therapies has been reported for both bacteria, and serious S. aureus skin infections are noted in both humans and animals. This project will investigate the ability of proteasome-derived defence peptides (PDDPs) – which can be naturally produced by our body – to protect against infection whilst promoting wound healing. It will also analyse the mechanisms by which PDDPs exert their effects. For this, different techniques (in vitro, ex vivo and molecular biology) will be used. For the ex vivo experiments, a wound dressing containing PDDPs will be developed with specific characteristics to allow PDDPs to target the pathogens whilst promoting wound healing.