Unusual Collaborations Projects

What are UCo projects?

Unusual Collaborations Grants are designed to take an idea or project further by enabling innovative, interdisciplinary science and scholarship that aims for societal impact. An Unusual Collaborations Grant provides funding for one year with the idea that the project will extend beyond the initial funding period.

Currently active Unusual Collaboration Projects

  • All in the Same Boat

    We propose to advance interdisciplinary integration within and among water security pillars to support Sustainable Development Goals and European Green Deal policies. With this integration can we secure water from raindrop to tap.

  • Plasticity, here, there, everywhere

    Plasticity is used to describe adaptation to external stimuli while fostering resilience at multiple levels, from the societal to the individual, organism and cellular and even the molecular.

  • Playing with the Trouble

    A critical challenge for interdisciplinary collaborations is to navigate multiple worldviews and perspectives, both within academic research contexts, and in engagement with societal stakeholders.

  • Structures of Strength

    In SoS, we create a platform where a team of researchers from diverse fields such as biology, medicine, culture, history, engineering and mathematics learn from each other and work together in order to combine their knowledge.

  • Better Wave than Worry

    There are parallels to be drawn between the early signals for disease development, virus spreading, and extreme weather occurrence. It is our mission to identify the shared characteristics of such signals, and to assess their impact.

  • Smart Food - From Edible Origami to Solutions for Gastric Diseases

    Smart Food From Edible Origami to Solutions for Gastric Diseases

    Recently origami design was shown to be a substantial source of inspiration for the innovative design of smart materials with customizable properties.

  • The Power of One: Towards the Representation of Unheard and Unseen Individuals in the Hospital, Workplace and Neighbourhood

    We want to see the unseen and hear the unheard - people currently not included in abstract categories, data sets, or algorithms.

  • Imagining-More-Than-Human-Communities

    Imagine a community of humans and nonhumans. Who would it include? Animals? Robots? What are they doing? Working? Or playing? And who decides? This project explores ways of imagining a more equitable community of humans and nonhumans and how to make it a reality in our everyday lives.

  • Dirty Work, Clean Future

    With growing attention for labor shortages and employment conditions, it is remarkable that an unsustainable form of employment is understudied: dirty work.

Previously funded Unusual Collaborations projects

  • Towards a Data Driven Dashboard

    In order to support a socially just transition to circular agriculture, with the involvement of a broad range of stakeholders, we propose to develop a unique data-driven circular farming dashboard that provides actionable insight at a local, regional, and ultimately national level.

  • FAIR Battery

    The most common renewable energy sources, solar and wind electricity, are intermittent. The storage of energy in batteries, is therefore an essential link in localizing and democratizing access to electricity. To reach the deployment level necessary for the Paris agreement, energy storage facilities in ALL scales, from domestic to industrial, are needed immediately. The main goal of this UCo project is to develop an open-source electrochemical battery technology that can be deployed and maintained in the field, for residential users, small scale commercial use, and rural health posts.

  • Defeating Chronic Pain

    Whether in human or animal patients, chronic pain significantly reduces patients’ quality of life and is often difficult to treat. Despite the magnitude of the problem, chronic pain receives surprisingly little research attention.