Tage Erlander visiting professorship

Application procedure

For a person to access the call and start the application process, they must be authorised to create organisation applications on the organisation’s Prisma account, please refer to Prisma’s User manual for applying in calls for organisations. External link. If they will not be the project leader and responsible for completing the application, they must invite the project leader to the application once the process has been started (see under the heading “Applicant” below, and under the tab “Participants” in the application form).

Requirements for applicants

The following requirements must be fulfilled for the organisation to be eligible to apply for the grant. We carry out checks and reject applications that do not fulfil the requirements.

Focus and nominated candidate

The holder of the Tage Erlander professorship shall be an internationally prominent researcher, within a research field that changes according to a rolling schedule. The researcher nominated for the 2028 visiting professorship shall be active within one or several of the following fields:

• materials science and engineering
• applied and engineering physics
• astronomy and sub-atomic physics
• light and matter physics
• mechanical engineering
• biomedical engineering
• systems and electrical engineering
• computer science
• computational mathematics, data science and statistics
• mathematics

The researcher nominated for the visiting professorship shall be the holder of a professorship or corresponding at the time of application, and must not already be established in Sweden. The researcher must also be aware of the nomination and what acceptance of the professorship entails. If the nominated candidate declines to accept the professorship, the HEI cannot propose a replacement.

The visiting professor is expected to participate in the department’s research, and also to visit other departments across Sweden within their research field.

The visiting professor awarded the professorship shall be employed by the administrating organisation throughout the visit.

Applicant

The applicant for the grant must be a Swedish higher education institution (HEI) that we have approved as an administrating organisation for grants from the Swedish Research Council.

The application with a nominated candidate for the visiting professorship shall include a named researcher (project leader), who represents the department wishing to act as host for the visiting professorship. The project leader shall be employed by the administrating organisation at the start of and throughout the grant period and any further availability period.

When the application is registered and signed in Prisma (see below), the HEI and the nominating department undertake to be responsible for the local hosting and all practical arrangements associated with the visiting professor’s visit to Sweden, if the grant is awarded.

Number of applications and previous grants

General information about overlaps between applications and grants

The application must not cover costs for purposes that are already funded by the Swedish Research Council or any other funding body. Overlaps with other grants or applications may have impact on the grant amount awarded, or be a reason for us to reject the application.

There is no limit to the number of applications a single HEI may submit or participate in, but a single researcher may only be nominated in one application.

The researcher in question may also be nominated in an application for the Swedish Research Council’s grant for recruiting international visiting researchers to Sweden, but the organisation must choose between the grants if both are awarded.

Participating researchers

No participating researchers may be included in this application.

Costs and grant amounts

Funding may be applied for to cover salary costs in Sweden including social security contributions and insurance, rent of housing in Sweden, and travel between Sweden and the home country. The funding may also include travel costs for accompanying family members. The maximum amount you may apply for is 2 000 000 SEK, including indirect costs.

The grant amount includes cover of indirect costs as a percentage of the direct costs, according to the model used by the administrating organisation. Grants must not be used for research expenses, nor to scholarships.

The Swedish Research Council assumes that the administrating organisation will cover any costs in excess of the amount received.

Grant period

The visit to Sweden shall last no less than 6 months, and no longer than 1 year, and shall begin in 2028. The visit may be divided into more than one period. If so, this shall be clearly stated and justified in the application. The visit may, however, not be divided in such a way that it cannot be completed within the availability period of the grant, which is 12 months over and above the grant period applied for. This means that a visit for 6 months must end no later than 30 June 2029 and that a visit for 12 months must end no later than 31 December 2029.

The entire grant amount will be paid during 2028, irrespective of when during the year the visit begins. The first payment will be made during January 2028 at the earliest.

What must the application contain?

Please refer to the application form in Prisma in parallel with reading the instructions below, which describe the call-specific contents of the application. More information on what to do in practical terms is available in our Guide for applicants.

International experts are involved in the scientific assessment of the applications. To ensure fair and equitable assessment and efficient processing, please therefore complete your application in English.

The information we request under each tab in the application form is described below.

Descriptive information

Under this tab, in addition to what is asked for below, please state the name of the nominated researcher, their current HEI and country as project title (such as “Anna Smith, University of xx, USA”), and project period (the length of the visiting professorship in number of months).

Abstract

The abstract shall include a brief description of the following:

• name, university and country of the nominated researcher
• time (dates) for the visit
• brief justification for the visit
• planned programme

The description may cover a maximum of 1 500 characters including blank spaces. This is approximately one third of an A4 page in Arial, font size 11, single line spacing.

Research description

Research programme

The research programme shall consist of brief but complete information about the nomination. It may cover a maximum of 8 page-numbered A4 pages in Arial, font size 11, single line spacing and 2.5 cm margins, including references and any images. References may be provided either throughout or at the end of the programme. All sources must be provided with complete information; links alone are not sufficient.

The research programme must include the below headings and information, listed in the following order.

• The researcher and their research: Present the nominated researcher and their research.
• Justification: Justify the visiting researcher’s visit.
• Contribution to research: Describe how the visiting researcher may contribute to Swedish research in general within the area in question.
• Plan for department participation: Specify the planning of the visiting researcher’s participation at the host department and other departments in Sweden.

Nominated researcher

Please state the following:

• name, title, current position and workplace of the nominated researcher
• the competence the researcher is expected to bring to the host department
• the length of the visit, and whether it is divided up and, if so, how
• the department(s) or corresponding where the visiting professor will be active, and the name of the representative (head of department or corresponding) of the department(s).

The nominated researcher’s CV and publication list

Please attach a brief CV with full address details (including email address) and current position title of the nominated researcher. Please also attach a publication list, divided up under the headings Peer-reviewed articles, Other articles and Books.

Please also note that no CV data or publications shall be entered elsewhere in the application.

Budget and research resources

Salary

Please state the salary applied for, for the nominated researcher (select the role “Participating researcher” in the table), both as a percentage of a full-time salary and as actual annual amounts (including social security contributions). Please state the amounts in Swedish krona, rounded to the nearest 1 000 SEK.

Running costs

Describe the nominated visiting professor’s costs for rent of housing, insurance, or travel between Sweden and the home country on separate lines. Please state annual amounts in Swedish krona, rounded to the nearest 1 000 SEK.

Total cost of the visiting professorship

Prisma will automatically add up your budget items listed in a table. The total amount applied for shall also include indirect costs. These shall be added to the table by the applicant (project leader). Here the applicant (project leader) can also add any additional costs that the visiting professorship entails (for which you are not seeking funding under this call).

Justification of the budget applied for

Justify briefly each cost applied for in the budget stated. The description may cover a maximum of 4 000 characters including blank spaces. This is approximately one A4 page in Arial, font size 11, single line spacing.

Administrating organisation

Please state the site of the visiting professorship

Participants

Here the person invited to be the project leader for the application may invite participating administrators. Please note that participating researchers may not be invited in this application.

How your application is assessed

Scientific quality is the fundamental criterion when the Swedish Research Council allocates grants to research. Your application is evaluated in competition with other applications based on the following evaluation criteria.

Evaluation process

Your application for Tage Erlander visiting professorship is evaluated by appointed external reviewers with competence in the specific topics of the call within natural and engineering sciences and discussed by a review panel where the members are Swedish and international researchers working within the topics of the call.

At least two external reviewers will review and grade your application individually. The appointed review panel then meets to discuss and prioritize the applications, and to make a proposal for a decision to the Scientific Council for Natural and Engineering Sciences.

Review panel

Following the grant decision your application will receive a justification for the decision which contains a summary of the review panel’s discussion and overall assessment of the scientific quality of the application.

Here you will find a more comprehensive description of the Swedish Research Council's assessment of applications.

Evaluation criteria and guiding questions

The evaluation of the nominated researcher’s scientific merits and position internationally, and the relevance to the call are assessed on a seven-grade scale.

For each criterion, there are guiding questions to support the reviewers’ evaluation of your application. These questions can also function as guidance for you when writing your application.

Scientific merits and position internationally of the nominated researcher (1-7)

• How significant are the scientific merits of the nominated researcher in relation to the relevant research area?
• How scientifically eminent is the nominated researcher internationally?

Relevance to the call (1-7)

Motivation of the stay.

• What competence is the nominated researcher expected to bring to the host department? To what extent will the nominated researcher contribute to the development of the research activities at the host department?
• What is the quality and scope of the plan for the nominated researcher’s participation at the host department and other research departments in Sweden? How justified are the suggested activities?
• How will the nominated researcher contribute to the development of Swedish research in general within the relevant research area?
• What is the quality of the suggested research program and to what extent is the program relevant to the research area in focus?