The Nordic Centre of Excellence Programme on Food, Nutrition and Health

The Nordic Centre of Excellence (NCoE) Programme on Food, Nutrition and Health was launched as a start of a joint effort to enhance the scientific quality and international visibility of Nordic research within this field. With co-financing by Nordforsk and the National Research Councils, the NCoE Programme will run in 2007-2011. The total annual funding will be up to 18 MNOK (approx. 2.3 million EURO).

The main objective of the NCoE Programme is to create Nordic strength by promoting scientific excellence and enhancing intra-Nordic research collaboration, co-operation and mobility of researchers. Thus, a NCoE is a well-structured and well-managed network of existing research teams from at least three different Nordic countries forming a virtual centre of joint objectives. Research teams from the Baltic states and North-western Russia may participate, but the main applicant and partners must be located in one of the co-funding Nordic countries.

Food, Nutrition and Health is a research field where the Nordic countries are known to be strong. Significant added value may therefore be expected from close collaboration of strong complementary research groups.

The NordForsk NCoE programme on Food Nutrition and Health was launched at a kick-off event at Voksenåsen Kultur- og konferansesenter in Oslo, 4 June 2007. NordForsk Chair Kari Kveseth held an introductory speech about NordForsk and the NCoE programme, and the centre leaders presented the plans and aims of their new Nordic research centres. Keynote speaker was nutritional science professor Knut-Inge Klepp, Director of the Department for Public Health at The Norwegian Directorate of Health and Social Services. His talk “Public health to the public” dealt with the challenge of translating research based knowledge on Food & Health into public health profit.

The centres are:

HELGA: Nordic Health – Wholegrain Food
Co-ordinated by Anne Tjønneland at the Danish Cancer Society, Denmark.








SYSDIET: Systems biology in controlled dietary interventions and cohort studies
Co-ordinated by Matti Uusitupa, Universitety of Kuopio, Finland.






MitoHealth: Centre for Bioactive Food Components and Prevention of Lifestyle Diseases
Co-ordinated by Rolf Kristian Berge, Universitety of Bergen, Norway.






The centres were also presented in St.Petersburg 25 April, at the kick-off “Northern Taste Dimension” – a part of the New Nordic Food programme of the Nordic Council of Ministers.


On December 1st 2006, the application process in NordForsk’s Nordic Centre of Excellence Programme on Food, Nutrition and Health entered its second and decisive stage. Eight applicants of those 21 who delivered an Expression of Interest by October 23rd 2006, were invited to hand in a full application to NordForsk by January 15th 2007. NordForsk has processed the submitted applications and negotiations with three new research centres are now in the final stage .

Important programme documents
1.Programme description defining prioritized areas of research is included in the Programme Memorandum (pdf), one of the three application documents listed here and on the national Research Councils‘ webpages.
2.The Application form for this two-step application process, to be filled in and handed in to the NordForsk Programme Secretariate in Oslo no later than 16.00 p.m. CET, October 23rd 2006. Applications should be e-mailed (electronic version) and postmarked (in paper, manually signed) by this deadline.
3.The third document available is a list of Steering Committee members and observers (pdf) for each financing country.

Contact person
Senior adviser Harry Zilliacus
E-mail: harry.zilliacus@nordforsk.org
Phone +47 94 83 86 81 or