For Lene Oddershede, impact begins long before a technology reaches the market. It begins with the science, institutions and capabilities that make breakthroughs possible in the first place.
As Chief Scientific Officer for Planetary Science and Technology at the Novo Nordisk Foundation, Oddershede works across a portfolio spanning natural and technical sciences, artificial intelligence, quantum technology, agriculture, food, the Green Tripartite and innovation.
The breadth is deliberate.
The Foundation’s ambition is to advance fundamental knowledge while securing societal impact and strengthening Danish, Nordic and European capabilities in planetary health and technology.
For Lene Oddershede, that means working across the full arc of scientific progress: from discovery to infrastructure, from talent to technology, and from long-term research to eventual societal application.
Built for the long horizon
The institutional structure around her makes that possible.
The Novo Nordisk Foundation is a self-owned enterprise foundation that wholly owns Novo Holdings, which manages the Foundation’s assets and serves as the controlling shareholder of Novo Nordisk and Novonesis.
At the end of 2025, Novo Holdings managed DKK 694 billion in assets. In the same year, the Foundation awarded DKK 11.8 billion in philanthropic grants and investments supporting more than 2,200 projects.
But the significance of that structure extends beyond scale.
The Foundation is required to maintain controlling ownership of Novo Nordisk and Novonesis, providing a stable ownership base designed around long-term development. Novo Holdings likewise invests with a long-term return perspective.
That gives the wider Novo ecosystem an unusual capacity to operate across time horizons that often sit beyond governments, public markets or traditional venture capital.
In science, those horizons matter.
The discoveries capable of creating the greatest impact rarely move directly from laboratory to application. They require sustained investment in research environments, infrastructure, talent, engineering and institutions before their full potential becomes visible.
Lene Oddershede works inside precisely that space.
From physics to planetary science
Before joining the Foundation in 2019, Lene Oddershede built her career as a physicist and professor at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.
Her research included pioneering work using optical tweezers and exploring the physics of biological systems, placing her career at the intersection of fundamental physics and complex biological questions.
She joined the Foundation to establish and lead its activities in natural and technical sciences. In 2025, her mandate expanded when she became Chief Scientific Officer for Planetary Science and Technology and joined the Foundation’s Executive Management team.
The progression reflects a widening field of impact.
Rather than focusing on a single discipline, Oddershede now works across scientific domains whose convergence may prove increasingly important to solving complex global challenges.
Quantum technology is among the clearest examples.
Building quantum capability
In 2022, the Novo Nordisk Foundation committed DKK 1.5 billion over 12 years to the Novo Nordisk Foundation Quantum Computing Programme at the University of Copenhagen.
Its goal is to develop a full-scale, generally applicable quantum computer by the end of 2034.
The effort extends far beyond theoretical research.
Quantum Foundry Copenhagen is building specialized fabrication capabilities needed for advanced quantum hardware. Oddershede serves as its chair.
She also chairs QuNorth, established by the Foundation and Denmark’s Export and Investment Fund, EIFO. The two institutions are investing €80 million in the initiative, which will house Magne, an advanced quantum computer being developed with Microsoft and Atom Computing and expected to become available around the turn of 2026/27.
Lene Oddershede also sits on the board of Quantum Denmark and serves on the European Commissioner’s High-Level Advisory Board on Quantum.
Taken together, these efforts operate at different points along the same continuum.
One builds foundational research capacity. Another develops specialized infrastructure. Another provides researchers and companies access to advanced computing capability in the nearer term.
The common objective is not simply to possess quantum technology.
It is to create the conditions in which quantum can eventually produce meaningful scientific, economic and societal value.
Lene Oddershede’s Impact across systems
Quantum is only one part of Oddershede’s remit.
Planetary Science and Technology brings together fields including physics, computing, biotechnology, agriculture and food systems because many of the world’s most consequential challenges do not fit neatly within individual disciplines.
Climate change intersects with energy, materials, agriculture and computation.
Food security connects biology, land use, resilience and supply chains.
Artificial intelligence and quantum technologies may reshape how scientists model complex systems, discover materials and understand biological processes.
Progress increasingly depends on connecting these disciplines rather than advancing them in isolation.
That creates a different role for scientific institutions.
The question is no longer simply which research projects deserve funding.
It is which capabilities, institutions and ecosystems need to exist for future breakthroughs to become possible.
Oddershede’s portfolio sits directly within that challenge.
From knowledge to impact
The Novo Nordisk Foundation’s model allows fundamental science and societal impact to exist on the same continuum.
Some investments can generate visible outcomes within years. Others may require decades before their importance becomes clear.
Both can matter.
That long horizon creates room to support scientific exploration while simultaneously building the infrastructure and institutions required to translate discovery into capability.
It also creates room for uncertainty.
Frontier technologies such as quantum computing and artificial intelligence carry enormous potential, but the most consequential applications may not yet be obvious.
The strategic task is therefore not simply to predict which technology will win.
It is to ensure that scientists, institutions and societies have the capacity to use new technologies when their possibilities emerge.
That is the thread running through Oddershede’s work.
Impact does not begin when science produces a commercial product. It begins earlier, with the decision to invest in knowledge, people and capabilities whose greatest contribution may still be decades away.
At the Novo Nordisk Foundation, Lene Oddershede is helping build that future before its outcomes are fully known.
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