The Otto Mønsted Foundation’s MADE Award

The Otto Mønsted Foundation’s MADE Award is presented to a Ph.D. student or Postdoc in MADE whose research solves or has the potential to solve industrial challenges

The Otto Mønsted Foundation

The award is sponsored by the Otto Mønsted Foundation, whose main objective is contribute to the development of Denmark’s trade and industry.

To achieve this objective, the Otto Mønsted Foundation primarily supports research and educational activities within the technical sciences and business fields of study.

Otto Mønsted (1838-1916) established the first production of margarine in Denmark in 1883 with factories in Denmark and England. In 1916, he and his wife Anna Sophie Mønsted decided that their fortune should be a part of a foundation carrying Otto Mønsted’s name.

MADE – Manufacturing Academy of Denmark – works to strengthen production in Denmark through research, innovation and education. MADE unites manufacturing companies, universities and RTOs in an innovative collaboration, where state-of-the-art solutions are developed and implemented in industry with the goal of making Denmark the world’s leading manufacturing nation.

The Otto Mønsted Foundation has the main objective of contributing to the development of Denmark’s trade and industry. To achieve this objective, the Otto Mønsted Foundation primarily supports research and educational activities within the technical sciences and business fields of study.

The Otto Mønsted Foundation’s MADE Award is sponsored by the Otto Mønsted Foundation and is open to researchers that have been key contributors to solutions that solve or has the potential to solve industrial challenges in MADE’s research platforms. By focusing on the good examples in the MADE programme, the intention is to:

Motivate participants in MADE’s research activities to deliver workable results that have real potential and solve specific challenges in the Danish manufacturing industry.

In this way, a synergy between the Otto Mønsted Foundation’s and MADE’s focus on production and manufacturing in Denmark has been created.

Otto Mønsted Foundation’s MADE Award

The Otto Mønsted Foundation’s MADE Award is presented to a Ph.D. student or Postdoc working with one of the five Danish universities (AAU, AU, CBS, DTU and SDU) in MADE. Allocation of the award is based on a specific research area and/or finding in which the recipient has played a main part.

The award consists of a first and a second prize that both will be announced on-stage at the MADE innovation conference on 7 December 2023 in Copenhagen.

The first prize winner will receive 100,000 DKK and the second prize winner will receive 50,000 DKK. Besides the cash award, both prize winners will also receive a diploma and an art price. The diploma bears the recipient’s name and the name of his or her institution. The artwork will be presented on the day by a board member of the Otto Mønsted Foundation. The prize money received by the winners must be used for the following within a year:

The prize money is to be used to support the candidates research, for example the prize winner and his/her research colleagues will be able to make study visits together to international research institutions and/or international companies which represent the state-of-the-art within the theme or application area that the award-winning project concerns.

Nomination process

Nominations for the award can be made by the Work Package Leaders in MADE and must include a statement from the cooperating industrial partners. Nominations should be made using this MADE template. Complete nominations including project descriptions must be no longer than one page (350 words). In addition to the project descriptions, nominees must submit a video with a max length of 3 minutes.

Nominations should be submitted to the MADE Secretariat, by email: info@made.dk no later than September 2nd, 2022. The MADE Secretariat is responsible for ensuring that all nominations comply with competition rules.

The MADE Secretariat is responsible for ensuring that all nominations comply with competition rules. As far as possible, the secretariat will ensure that any formal shortcomings are corrected in eligible nominations. Please attach the endorsement(s) from your industrial partner(s) in the mail.

Criteria for judging

The winner will be selected by the jury according to the following criteria:

  • The expected industrial potential of the implementation of the research
  • The likelihood of successful implementation
  • The degree of industrial insight and understanding shown in the nominated work
  • The degree of cooperation between industry and research partners in connection with the work
  • The degree of originality of the concept in the research and/or application
  • Excellence in thought, analysis and documentation

Nominations will be assessed by a jury, chaired by a member of the Otto Mønsted Foundation’s board, plus an additional five members appointed by the MADE board:

  • Bjarne Kjær Ersbøll – Professor and section leader at DTU Compute (Otto Mønsteds Fond board member)
  • Morten Buhl Sørensen – Senior Vice President, Danfoss A/S (MADE board member)
  • Niels Møller Jensen – Vice President, Industry & EMEA Operations Grundfos (MADE board member)
  • Casper Hansen – CEO, Technicon (MADE board member)
  • Peter Hesseldahl – Editor, Mandag Morgen

Parties involved

The Otto Mønsted Foundation’s MADE Award is bestowed on a Ph.D. student or a Postdoc affiliated with one of the five universities participating in MADE.

The award is granted on the merits of a specific piece of research in which the recipient is the prime contributor. The work package leader and industrial partner, under which the research is carried out, is required to endorse the proposal.

Here you can view the document for the nomination process and fill out the requiered information.

The nomination should address the following questions:

  1. What industrial challenge are you trying to / have you addressed?
  2. What novel research and innovation approaches have you / are you applying to meet the challenge?
  3. How have you demonstrated that your approach is an improvement?

History and previous winners

Read about previous winners and nominees and get introduced to their research and their scientific and industrial results.

Venkata Karthik Nadimpalli, DTU

2022 Otto Mønsted Foundation’s MADE Award

1st Prize: Matei Saravin, AAU

2nd Prize: David Sarancic, DTU

Read more about the winners of The Otto Moensted Foundation’s MADE Award 2022

2021 Otto Mønsted Foundation’s MADE Award

1st Prize: Yong Liu, DTU

2nd Prize: Emma Hostrup, AU

Read more about the winners of The Otto Moensted Foundation’s MADE Award 2021

2020 Otto Mønsted Foundation’s MADE Award

1st Prize: Venkata Karthik Nadimpalli, DTU
2nd Prize: Markus Thomas Bockholt, AAU

Read more about the winners of The Otto Moensted Foundation’s MADE Award 2020

2019 Otto Mønsted Foundation’s MADE Award

1st Prize: Mads Bejlegaard, Aalborg University
2nd Prize: Nikolaos Giannekas, Technical University of Denmark

Read more about Mads Bejlegaard and Nikolaos Giannekas – the winners of The Otto Mønsted Foundation’s MADE Award 2019

In the years 2015-2018, the award was sponsored by the Alexander Foss Industrial Fund.

Use the link below to find out more and discover the previous winners.