15 May 2026
DIREC was established through a joint bid by the eight Danish universities and the Alexandra Institute to the Danish Innovation Fund. Opting to collaborate rather than compete across all Danish computer science departments was a deliberate choice, and not an obvious one. No other national initiative has created a comparable forum for strategic discussions on digital research capacity across institutions
Establishing DIREC meant choosing collaboration over competition – and the following evaluation provides strong learnings for the next phase of DIREC and how to take on the digital challenges that we cannot solve alone.
The evaluation was commissioned by the Danish Innovation Fund and carried out by IRIS Group. It is based on survey data and interviews with researchers, companies, DIREC board members and ecosystem stakeholders. The full evaluation is available in the link below.
DIREC was established in 2020 to consolidate and scale digital research capabilities across Danish universities, while strengthening collaboration with industry. Against a backdrop of rapid technological development, DIREC was designed to address fragmentation in the digital research landscape and to create a coordinated framework for long-term collaboration across institutions and sectors.
In its first five years DIREC has contributed to:
Overall, the evaluation finds that DIREC has made a significant contribution to strengthening Danish digital research capacity and national coordination in computer science. By pooling capacity at national level, DIREC has enabled projects, PhD programmes and events that individual universities could not have sustained independently. Rather than functioning as a traditional funding instrument, DIREC is widely perceived as a national coordinating platform for computer science–based research.
DIREC has delivered a high level of academic output relative to its scale. Academic quality is assessed as broadly in line with international computer science standards. Bibliometric indicators place DIREC above both Danish and European averages on most measures.
Recruitment of researchers has been substantial and geographically distributed across Denmark. Beyond its direct funding, DIREC has acted as a catalyst, increasing the attractiveness of Danish research environments for early-career and international researchers. The Young Researcher Entrepreneurship Bootcamp has strengthened entrepreneurial capabilities among digital researchers by building awareness, skills and networks.
The centre has generated a wide range of research-based outputs including prototypes, algorithms and demonstrators. The projects that created the most tangible innovation value were those in which companies helped define the challenge from the outset – rather than simply contributing data or validating results.
