Grants and Writing Resources for Karolinska Institute

On 25 September 2026, six researchers from KI, KTH and Stockholm University each had four minutes to explain their work at the Stockholm heat of the Researchers' Grand Prix, to an audience made up mostly of upper secondary school pupils. A Karolinska doctoral student won the heat with a talk on using cardiac MRI to diagnose heart attacks, drawn from almost three years of research, and advances to the national final on 17 November. Earlier in the year KI reported that a doctoral thesis on autism in young adulthood, written in the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, had received a recognition award from the International Society for Autism Research.

Summer Research for Undergraduates

The KI Summer School in Medical Research runs for seven weeks: a week of lectures on hypothesis testing, ethics, statistics and scientific writing, then a six-week project in a KI research group. It is open to first-cycle KI students with at least 30 KI credits and pays a research scholarship of SEK 10,000 a month. In August each student gives a short oral presentation, defends a poster, and hands in a written report in manuscript format.

The Amgen Scholars Program at Karolinska Institutet offered up to 10 places in summer 2026 to first- and second-year undergraduates at European universities. The eight-week program paid SEK 11,000 a month, covered housing and travel, and ended with oral and poster presentations before the scholars went on to the Amgen Scholars European Symposium in Cambridge.

Scholarships and Travel Grants

Registered students at basic and advanced level can apply for the Karolinska Institutet Foundation Scholarships, one-time payments of generally SEK 5,000 to 20,000. Awards go on financial need or on scientific merit, and the merit scoring rises from a research plan to a manuscript in progress to an accepted or published KI article. Fee-paying master's applicants compete for the KI Global Master's Scholarship, which covers tuition for the top-ranked applicant in each programme. In 2026 there were 12 awardees from 1,002 applicants.

Doctoral students and postdocs get priority for the KI Travel Grant. For travel in the first 2026 period, the ceiling was SEK 10,000 within Europe and SEK 17,000 elsewhere. The trip has to involve active participation, such as a poster or an oral presentation at a conference.

Funding a Doctoral Position

At Karolinska the future main supervisor applies for KID funding, an internal block grant that covers roughly half of a doctoral student's salary for four years. Since 2005, with the exception of 2017, KI has announced between 60 and 116 KID grants a year.

Writing and the Thesis

Academic Writing Support (Språkverkstaden) at the University Library offers Zoom appointments with writing instructors in English and Swedish, up to two per text. Students email the text a business day ahead and name the section they want to work on. The library also runs open workshops on academic and popular science writing.

Doctoral theses are printed by Universitetsservice US-AB on the printer's template, and each one carries an ISBN. At least three weeks before the public defence, the library publishes the thesis in the KI Open Archive, and the candidate nails a printed copy to the board at the University Library in Solna or Flemingsberg.

Our editors take on degree projects and doctoral theses at the last stage, before the examiner sees them or the printer sets them. See our Karolinska Institute dissertation and thesis editing page, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.

From Our Writing Guides

• ESL Academic Writing: Overcoming Common Grammar Habits
• Writing the Abstract and Title: First Impressions Matter
• From Dissertation to Publication: The Final Scholarly Synthesis