Cutting-edge research projects and selected grants

Research is the basis of all our work. We develop new technology for people through research, education, innovation, and scientific advice. DTU researchers work across disciplines on cutting-edge projects, and they collaborate with leading academic, private, and public partners globally.

Research at DTU in the technical and the natural sciences provides society with innovative solutions for sustainable change by making new discoveries and driving change. Focus areas include a large spectrum of science and engineering disciplines, such as digitalization, energy technologies for a sustainable future, and life science and biotechnology.

Pushing the boundaries of science

In 2022, DTU researchers set a world record by transmitting 1.8 petabits per second in a fiber optic cable—corresponding to twice the total global Internet traffic—using only a single chip-scale light source. The transmission method enables significant reductions in power consumption for Internet transmission and thus a reduction of its climate footprint. In another world first, DTU researchers in collaboration with the Niels Bohr Institute used an on-demand single photon source to demonstrate an unbreakable, quantum-encrypted video connection via the existing fibre network.

Also in 2022, the Ministry of Higher Education and Research along with the Danish National Research Foundation, the Carlsberg Foundation, the Lundbeck Foundation, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, and Villum Fonden granted EUR 40 million to the pioneer center CAPeX for the development of materials and Power-to-X technologies that will bring together leading researchers from around the world to accelerate the green transition. The center is housed at DTU. Aalborg University is co-leading on the center.

Selected grants in 2022

In 2022, DTU researchers received nine prestigious grants from the European Research Council—the largest number of ERC grants to be earmarked for research at DTU in a single year. They comprised four Advanced Grants, four Consolidator Grants, and one Starting Grant.

It was Professor Anja Boisen’s second Advanced Grant making her one of only a small handful of researchers in Denmark and only the second at DTU to have achieved this distinction. Her goal is to find new ways of administering more medicines through capsules rather than needles.

Professor Dorte Juul Jensen received the EUR 0.7 million Villum Kann Rasmussen Annual Award—the largest personal award for science in Denmark—for her research on ‘the inner life’ of metals. Furthermore, Professor Anne Ladegaard Skov received the 2022 Grundfos Prize for her transformative applied research into dielectric elastomers, potentially leading to artificial muscles.

Nationally, nine younger DTU researchers received the so-called Sapere Aude Starting Grant from the Independent Research Fund Denmark in recognition of their top-class research.

The Novo Nordisk Foundation awarded DTU six excellence grants, including a Data Science Ascending Investigator grant to Professor Lars Kai Hansen for a project aimed at exploring whether artificial intelligence algorithms can learn to communicate in a language humans can understand.

Villum Fonden distributed seven Young Investigator grants to young and talented DTU researchers so they can pursue their own ideas and establish their own research groups. Two researchers received Semper Ardens Accelerate grants from The Carlsberg Foundation. The Lundbeck Foundation awarded a Fellow and an Ascending Investigator grant.

Additionally, DTU researchers received two Elite Research Travel Grants and two Elite Research Awards from the Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Research. Professors Anne Ladegaard Skov and Sune Lehmann Jørgensen were the recipients of the two latter, prestigious awards.

5,254 publications in 2022

1.51 category normalized citation impact*

73% of publications by DTU researchers are co-published with researchers from institutions outside of Denmark

17% publications in the top 10% most cited

Watch videos

What is Power-to-X?

dtu.dk/2023profile1

Quantum-encrypted fibre connection dtu.dk/2023profile2

*Normalized citation impact: Citation impact (citations per publication) normalized for subject (Web of Science Category), year, and document type. A value of one represents performance on par with the world average. DTU’s citation impact is thus 51% above world average.

Miniscule Research

WITH A HUGE IMPACT

Just in time for Christmas, DTU-researchers achieved a world record by cutting a 25-second snippet of Rocking Around the Christmas Tree onto a 40-micrometre-wide record using a new nano-sculpting machine—the Nanofrazor.

The Nanofrazor can engrave 3D patterns into surfaces with nanoscale resolution, allowing the researchers to create new nanostructures that may pave the way for novel technologies in fields such as quantum devices, magnetic sensors, and electron optics.

Research That Will Help Drive The Green Transition

World class research into wind technology of the future is carried out at DTU—both here at the university’s advanced wind tunnel and its test centres on the west coast of Jutland.