Apply for Serendipity Grants
About Serendipity Grants
With the Serendipity Grants, we seek to enable our active grantees to perform explorative investigations of novel and unexpected, also known as serendipitous, ideas or discoveries, which have emerged as a consequence of investigations performed during a current LEO Foundation-funded project.
The discovery or idea should be outside the scope of the original project and may even reside outside the primary research focus of the grantee. The discovery or idea should be at an early stage of maturity where it would be unlikely to receive support via other LEO Foundation funding instruments.
A Serendipity Grant can last for up to two years and has a limit of DKK 4 million, including administrative costs.
How to apply
The Serendipity Grants program is announced once a year in open competition.
In 2025 the application deadline is 24 June (16:00 CEST).
Please read the application guide for the full call text and further information about the eligibility criteria, evaluation process, and requirements for the content of the application.
Application guide (NB: the 2025 application guide will be published before the call opens)
The evaluation process
All Serendipity Grant applications submitted will be administratively screened for eligibility and mandatory requirements.
If approved as eligible, the application will undergo external review by a panel of independent reviewers. Based on this evaluation the LEO Foundation Board of Trustees will make the final decision and applicants will be notified of the results.
Application deadlines
The call closes at 16:00 (CET/CEST).
| Grant | Opens | Deadline | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
Serendipity Grants |
29 Apr 2025 | 24 Jun 2025 | Not open | |
For novel and unexpected, also known as serendipitous, discoveries made by current LEO Foundation Grants of up to DKK 4 million are awarded for a two-year period. DEADLINE: 24 June 2025 (16:00 CEST) Application guide (NB: the 2025 application guide will be published before the call opens) |
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Get inspired from projects granted
Ya-Chieh Hsu, Professor, Harvard University
Pursuing an interesting hypothesis may indeed lead to new insight. Yet sometimes, as frequently experienced in science, pursuing a hypothesis may also lead to the discovery of something completely unexpected and intriguing. Something serendipitous, calling for further exploration.
And that’s exactly what happened in early 2024 to Ya-Chieh Hsu, Professor at Department of Stem Cell & Regenerative Biology at Harvard University.
