Maj and Tor Nessling Foundation: General Call - Personal Grants

Maj and Tor Nessling Foundation: General Call - Personal Grants

Status: ACTIVE
Funder: Maj and Tor Nessling Foundation
Amount: €28,000 - €32,000
Last Updated: July 22, 2025

Summary

The Maj and Tor Nessling Foundation provides personal grants for doctoral and postdoctoral research aimed at environmental protection. It supports innovative projects that address climate change, biodiversity, and resource sustainability. Grants can fund up to four years for doctoral research and two years for postdoctoral work. The foundation emphasizes collaboration across disciplines, scalability of results, and effective communication with stakeholders. Applicants must meet specific eligibility criteria and submit detailed project proposals.

Overview

The Nessling Foundation awards funding for scientific research promoting environmental protection, and for the communication and implementation of research knowledge. We award personal working grants along with funding for other research costs for PhD and postdoctoral projects.We award grants for the communication or implementation of scientific environmental information that can be applied for by private persons, communities or organizations.See separate grant page here In the general call, you can apply for a grant for 1) doctoral thesis research, 2) postdoc research or 3) the communication and implementation of scientific environmental information. The Foundation emphasises the applications of postdoctoral researchers in research projects. In doctoral theses, we emphasise novel proposals in particular. In the application criteria we emphasise the communication and interaction plan. Each applicant can submit only one application in one category. Personal Grants The research grant can be awarded for several years at a time for the same project: a maximum of four years for doctoral thesis research and a maximum of two years for postdoc research. Grants are awarded for the entire grant period, but we require annual reports on the project. Research and other activities supported by the Nessling Foundation are divided into five phenomena related to environmental protection, which we expect the applicants' solutions to be related to: Climate changeBiodiversity lossSustainability of the use of natural resourcesWater risksChemicalization and pollution The project applied for can also be systemic and solve more than one of the phenomena mentioned above. Estimated Duration of the project: Maximum 4 years for doctoral thesis projects, maximum 2 years for postdoc projects. Main funding criteria for research projects Solution orientation, societal relevance and scalability of the resultsScientific quality of the research, researcher and research group (if the applicant is doing research as part of a group)Innovativeness of the researchCollaboration between the researchers/research groups/organisationsCommunicating about the research and interacting with stakeholders (especially knowledge users)Educational environment (if applying for a doctoral thesis grant) What are Grants Awarded For The Foundation primarily awards funding for solution-oriented postdoc projects and doctoral thesis projects whose results have a systematic and scalable impact on the progress of environmental protection. We also support the communication and implementation of researched environmental information to society. Environmental challenges are multidisciplinary phenomena, which means that no scientific field can be excluded from our search for solutions. Rather, we encourage researchers to engage in forms of collaboration that break the boundaries of science. The projects do not have to relate to Finland alone, since the phenomenon-based approach is often essentially global. However, the results of the projects supported must be applicable to Finnish environmental protection and societal decision-making or otherwise support Finland’s environmental objectives. In particular, the Foundation supports projects that promote collaboration between different scientific fields or sectors and the transfer of knowledge to its users. For example, two postdocs from different fields can apply for support for a joint project with their own applications or the research project applied for can be done in collaboration with a company. The Foundation also funds novel research and collaboration projects that are suitable for funding and situated in the interface or meeting ground between scientific fields.

Eligibility

You can learn more about this opportunity by visiting the funder's website. Doctoral thesis researchThe applicant of the research grant is the project’s researcher, i.e. the grant recipient him/herself.Doctoral students doing doctoral thesis projects must have graduated and their acceptance into a doctoral programme must have been confirmed before the commencement of the grant payment.In the 2022 general grant call, the size of a personal grant is 28,000 euros a year for a doctoral thesis researcher and 32,000 euros for a Post doctoral researcher.It is also possible to include a reasonable amount of travel and research expenses in the application.The working grant can also be used at a non-Finnish research institute. At the Nessling Foundation, the mobility of researchers is a plus.We fund doctoral thesis work if the project is just beginning or less than halfway through.You can apply for funding a maximum of four years.The maximum grant sum is 120,000 euros per project (if applied for four years).Postdoc research in our special call themed "The economy and human health in the planet's ecological crisis"The applicant, i.e. the project’s responsible leader, should be merited in his or her own field with a doctoral degree, having obtained the degree no more than seven years ago.The project must include researchers representing at least two different disciplines.The project leader and the other researchers can in the application apply for a personal grant. The amount of personal grant is 32,000 euros for a doctoral researcher and 26,000 euros for a doctoral thesis researcher.We award 50,000–100,000 euros to projects.It is also possible to include a reasonable amount of travel and research expenses in the application.The length of the research project should be no more than three years.Implementation of scientific informationThe applicant can be an individual, community or organization.We are looking for co-creation and action projects involving researchers and end-users of information (for example, a company or a municipality).The grant sum may be used in the implementation of existing research information. This may include wage costs as well as costs regarding interaction and inclusion activities.We award 50,000–100,000 euros to projects.

Ineligibility

Funding will not be awarded for a new project if the applicant already has a Nessling project in progress.Grants are not awarded for finalising doctoral theses or other research projects.A personal grant will not be paid to a researcher who simultaneously earns a salary from a full-time position or duty, nor during parental leave or military service. The grant will also not be paid simultaneously with sickness allowance.