The University of Aarhus belongs to the international elite. The university is one of Europe’s leading research institutions and, among Danish universities, its research competence covers the broadest range of research fields. The university wishes to combine research in new ways – with new subject areas and across traditional subject borders – in greater depth and in new and unknown fields. The University of Aarhus offers all types of research from basic, applied and strategic research to research-based advice to the authorities and knowledge transfer.

The research activities at the university are widely acknowledged within the international research world. It is characteristic of the research at the University of Aarhus that the indicators that clearly measure the impact of research results are in the absolute top class internationally and – in several faculties – belong to the world’s elite. The university takes an active part in international research collaboration and has a considerable number of strategic alliances with universities and research institutions all over the world. Researchers and research talent at the university take part in top international teams, and the university’s institutes, centres and departments have state-of-theart equipment, databases and libraries. In a number of cases, they also host international research activities.

In 2006, the University of Aarhus received DKK 2.1 billion in research grants from the government and other external sources. Nationally, the university obtained 26.3% of the total amount of public research funding subject to competition. Of these funds, DKK 290 million came from research councils, DKK 100 million came from the EU and DKK 124 million came from the Danish National Research Foundation. In addition, the university received a three-figure million amount from a number of private foundations, especially the Lundbeck Foundation, the Velux Foundation, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, the Carlsberg Foundation, etc. The university has close to 3,500 full-time academic staff members who frequently publish material in scientific books and the most quoted peer-reviewed journals within all the main academic areas. This represents close to 25% of the total number of researchers employed at Danish universities and close to 25% of the total number of research contributions published in Denmark.

The aims and objectives are:

• to stimulate new research development
• to strengthen internationally acknowledged research
• to have research groups within all of its subject areas contributing to front-line research.

The University of Aarhus has decided:

• to support pioneering research by establishing a framework for original and innovative research work, including research that involves several main academic areas
• to strengthen research activity through improved recruitment of researchers and increased researcher mobility and exchange
• to increase the number of articles published in recognised journals and focus the published material towards selected target groups
• to enforce the implementation of action plans to ensure the diversity of research staff as regards age, gender and nationality
• to support the university’s position as an elite university by allocating 75% of
  its resources – directly or indirectly – to research.