This Call for proposals focuses on increasing the sustainability of production processes by developing and refining key enabling technologies in chemical technology, biotechnology and process technology. It aims to expand and improve sustainable production processes by making biochemical diversity accessible for industrial applications. To make that biochemical diversity accessible for use in sustainable production processes, key enabling technologies in one or more of these four fields must be improved: optimisation of sampling, which refers to effective sampling of the immense biochemical diversity in nature; determining structures, which involves detailed determination of the structures of biochemical substances, including stereochemical features; function analysis, which is the analysis and/or prediction of interactions in which biochemical substances function as ligands for receptors or substrates for enzymes; and bioconversion, which is the identification and characterisation of enzymes and chemical processes that play a role in the synthesis (including biosynthesis), conversion and breakdown of biochemical substances and the optimisation or improved expression of these enzymes and processes, either in the original organism or in alternative production organisms and microorganisms.

Appropriate topics that are within the scope of this Call for proposals include bioprospecting for new enzyme activity, biochemical substance discovery and structure determination, structure–function analysis such as receptor–ligand or enzyme–substrate interactions, catalytic including biocatalytic activation of small molecules such as CO₂, CH₄, and N₂ for the sustainable production of biochemical building blocks, chemical and biochemical pathway studies including the discovery of new pathways, transporters, regulation, and evolution, electrochemical and photochemical conversion technologies for mild-energetic biosynthesis, development of structure–reactivity models for the design of bio-based substances with optimal degradability and recyclability, metabolic pathway and protein engineering in microbes or plants, development and optimisation of process and production technologies including process intensification for the industrial upscaling of bio-based production, integration of biochemical innovations into existing industrial production platforms, design of flexible bioproduction processes focused on efficient use of natural resources, and technological solutions for sustainable separation and purification in bioproduction. Proposals primarily focused on topics outside the scope include the development of new algorithms, engineering new chassis variants of microbes or plants, traditional genome mining or genome sequencing, development of bioassays or in vivo assays, and the development of infrastructure for biosynthesis research.

Eligibility Criteria: Proposals must be submitted by a main applicant and one or more co-applicants, and written by a consortium that includes, in addition to the applicants, other participants. Four categories of participants can be distinguished in the consortium: main applicant, co-applicants, co-funders, and cooperation partners. Researchers are eligible to apply if they have a tenured position or a tenure track agreement at recognised research organisations including universities and universities of applied sciences as defined in the Higher Education and Scientific Research Act, university medical centres, institutes affiliated to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) or NWO, the Netherlands Cancer Institute, the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Advanced Research Centre for NanoLithography (ARCNL), and the Princess Máxima Center. Lectors at universities of applied sciences with a paid fixed-term appointment may also act as main or co-applicants. The main applicant must submit the proposal via the NWO web application ISAAC and will serve as the project leader and primary contact for NWO. Co-applicants play an active role in delivering the project and share responsibility with the main applicant for its realisation. The consortium must always include at least two co-funders, and all consortium partners should be actively involved in formulating the research questions and in the design and implementation of the project. The main applicant may submit only one proposal as main applicant and may participate as a co-applicant in no more than one other consortium under this Call, while a co-applicant may participate in at most two consortia. A co-funder is a party that participates in the consortium and contributes to the project in cash and/or in kind but receives no funding from NWO. At least two co-funders must jointly contribute a net minimum of 20% of the total budget, with a distinction made between private and public co-funders. A cooperation partner is a party that neither receives funding nor provides co-funding but is closely involved in the execution of the research and/or the use of its results, such as companies, public or private organisations, and other institutions.

The available budget for this call is €7,000,000. Applicants can request between €600,000 and €1,360,000, with NWO financing up to 80% of the total project budget. At least 20% of the budget must come from co-funding, with a minimum of 50% of co-funding from private sources. Projects should be impact-driven, developed in consortia including at least two co-funders, and focus on proof-of-concept to validation with consideration for industrial upscaling. Ethical, legal, and societal implications should be addressed throughout the project lifecycle.

The matchmaking meeting will be held in September 2025. The deadline for submitting requests for assessment of foreign organisations is 29 January 2026, and the deadline for submitting full proposals is 12 February 2026.

For more information, visit NWO.

https://www.nwo.nl/en/calls/kic-biochemical-diversity