Further Development of National Research Infrastructure for Quantum Technology Research

Approved research organisations and publicly funded managers of research infrastructure that collaborate closely with Norwegian research organisations are eligible to apply. See the list of approved research organisations.

Requirements relating to the Project Owner 

The research organisation listed as the Project Owner in the application form must have approved the submission of the application. If the application is a collaboration between several organisations, the Project Owner must submit the application on behalf of all partners. 

Requirements relating to partners 

Research organisations and publicly funded managers of research infrastructure that collaborate closely with Norwegian research organisations can be partners in research infrastructure projects. 

It is possible to add new partners to existing collaborations on research infrastructure. 

You can apply for funding to cover the actual costs necessary to carry out the project. The Project Owner must obtain information on costs from the partners in the project. These costs must be entered in the cost plan under the cost type to which they belong. 

See "What type of research infrastructure is eligible for funding" for a general description of the costs for which you can apply for funding in a research infrastructure project.    

In general, you can apply for funding for further development of research infrastructures to facilitate quantum technology research in Norway. The infrastructure must be of national importance. By national importance, we mean that the infrastructure: 

• must be of broad national interest; 
• as a general rule, must be found in one or a few places in the country; 
• will lay the foundation for internationally leading research; 
• shall be made available to relevant research communities and industries. 

In this call, research infrastructure refers to advanced scientific instruments and smaller equipment that are part of large-scale equipment facilities and electronic research infrastructure (e-infrastructure) that facilitate quantum technology research. 

When the aid constitutes state aid, it follows from the EU's General Block Exemption Regulation (GBER) Article 26, Investment aid for research infrastructures, what can be applied for. See more information about this below. 

You will find detailed and important information about what to enter in the project budget on the website.   

Scope of support 

You can apply for up to NOK 35 million. If you are applying for more than NOK 8 million, the project description must also include a brief description of what you will be funding if the project is awarded NOK 8 million. 

Conditions for funding 

Projects must start between 15 June 2025 and 15 August 2025, and you must apply for funding from the Research Council for 2025. The latest permitted project completion date is 31 December 2025. 

For the part of the funding that goes to undertakings (actors that offer goods or services in a market, i.e. that engage in economic activity), this constitutes state aid. 

If the support for research infrastructure constitutes state aid as defined in the Framework for State aid for Research and Development and Innovation, the aid will be granted in accordance with Article 26 of the Block Exemptions (Commission Regulation (EU) No 651/2014). ESA's R&D&I Guidelines allow, under certain conditions, for up to 20 per cent of economic activity with regard to the infrastructure's annual capacity utilisation (business assignments, others), without the aid for investment in the infrastructure being considered state aid).  In addition, the general conditions in Chapter I of the Regulation must be met. You can find the rules here.  

Further information on Article 26 of the GBER and on the economic and non-economic activities of research organisations and research infrastructures can be found on the Research Council's website on the state aid rules. Institutions that receive funding under this call are required to have a clear separation of between their economic and non-economic activities related to the research infrastructure, so that the Research Council's allocation is in accordance with the state aid rules. Prior to entering into a contract, you will therefore be asked to provide information about the planned infrastructure's capacity and the proportion of the capacity that will be used in economic activity.    

Before any contract is signed, you must present a plan for the future economic operation of the infrastructure to be upgraded. In this plan, you must highlight the future operating costs of the infrastructure and describe how the operating costs are intended to be covered. The Research Council will consider any own contributions to the operational financing of the infrastructure highlighted in this plan to be binding. 

In addition, you must be aware of the following if you should receive funding from us: 

• The Research Council's conditions for funding can also be found in our General Terms and Conditions for R&D Projects on the information page What to enter in the project budget.  
• The project manager and the Project Owner must have assessed and handled the consideration of research security in the project. Research security refers to risks associated with unwanted transfer of knowledge and technology, impact on research and innovation, or breaches of research ethics/integrity where knowledge and technology are used to undermine key societal values.  
• Grant recipients in research organisations and the public sector (Project Owners and partners) must have action plans for gender equality (GEPs) available on their websites. This must be in place before the contract is signed for projects with grants from us. The requirement does not apply to the private sector, interest groups or the voluntary sector.  
• For all projects that handle data, the Project Owner must prepare a data management plan in connection with the revised application. Here you will find more information about requirements for data management plans in projects that receive funding from us.  

Requirements for the institutions 

It is the institution's management that must submit the applications. We encourage you to view the applications in the context of the institution's strategy and to be aware of long-term operating costs that may accrue to the institution(s) following new investments and upgrades of research infrastructure. 

Requirements for the application 

In the project description, you must describe clearly how the infrastructure will be made available to research communities and relevant industry by parties other than the Project Owner and partners. 

You can change and submit the application several times until the application deadline. We recommend that you submit your application as soon as you have completed the application form and uploaded the mandatory attachments. When the application deadline expires, it is the version of the application that was submitted most recently that we process. 

• The application and all attachments must be written in English. 
• All attachments must be in PDF format. 

Mandatory attachments 

• Project description of a maximum of 15 pages. Use the standard template that you can download at the bottom of this page. 
• CV for the project manager and sub-project managers (work package managers) at all partner institutions of maximum 4 pages per person. Use the standard template that you can download at the bottom of this page. 

Applications that do not meet the requirements above will be rejected. 

Optional attachments 

• Suggestions for up to five referees who are presumed to be impartial to assess the application. 

All attachments to the application must be submitted with the application. We do not accept attachments submitted after the application deadline unless we have requested additional documentation. 

We will not consider documents and websites linked to in the application, or attachments other than those specified above. Be careful to upload the correct attachment type, as there are no technical restrictions on what kind of templates it is possible to upload in the application form. 

Applications will be assessed in light of the purpose of the call and the following criteria:

Once the application deadline has expired, we will first check that all formal requirements are met. Applications that do not satisfy the formal requirements will be rejected. Applications that are outside the thematic scope will not be eligible for funding. 

The Research Council may reject applications where the Project Owner or partner has materially breached its obligations in other projects funded by the Research Council in the two years prior to the submission of the application. 

The application may be rejected if the project manager has been appointed to the Joint Integrity Committee or the Investigation Committee in the last two years prior to the submission of the application. 

Where the requirements are met, we will make the application, with all mandatory attachments, available to peers who individually assess the criteria Excellence, Impact and Implementation. The referees then meet in panels where they arrive at a consensus assessment of the application for each of the three criteria. 

The portfolio board for Enabling Technologies makes the final decision on which applicants will be awarded funding. The Research Council ranks applications according to the average mark for the three assessment criteria. In addition to the marks given by the panels, the portfolio board makes a decision on which projects receive funding based on an overall portfolio assessment, including the distribution of projects in the priority areas of the topic and any changes in the ministries' financial or technical guidelines for allocation. 

See also: How we process applications.