The Hasselblad Foundation is offering a stipend for a natural scientist to spend November and December at Hôtel Chevillon in the village of Grez-sur-Loing in France. The purpose is to offer a stay abroad for a limited period that can offer peace and quiet to enable concentration on a piece of writing.

Hôtel Chevillon and Grez-sur-Loing
Hôtel Chevillon has gone down in the history of Nordic art as one of the two hotels in Grez-sur-Loing which in the 1880s welcomed among their guests many people who were later to become famous Nordic and Anglo-Saxon artists and writers. They included Carl Larsson, Karl Nordström, Bruno Liljefors, the Danish and Norwegian Skagen painters, August Strindberg and Robert Louis Stevenson, to mention but a few. In this carefully restored setting, the Göteborg-based Grez-sur-Loing Foundation now rents apartments and studios to institutions so that they, in turn, can offer stipends to enable artists, writers, photographers, scientists and others to live and work in the area for a number of months (www.grez-stiftelsen.se). Hôtel Chevillon is not a hotel in the normal meaning of the term and the accommodation offered is self-catering. Hôtel Chevillon does not offer facilities for the disabled.

Grez-sur-Loing is situated about 70 kilometres south of Paris and 9 kilometres south of Fontainebleu. The village has about 1300 inhabitants. Few changes have been made over the last century to the village centre with its narrow, winding streets and dense housing. Notable sights are the ancient arched bridge and the time-honoured ruins of the tower.

The stipend will amount to SEK 30,000 and the foundation will also pay the rental cost for the accommodation.

Professor Tore Samuelsson, Department of Medical Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Institute of Biomedicine, University of Gothenburg, has been awarded the 2010 stipend in Grez-sur-Loing for natural scientists.

The Foundation cites the following in its award motivation

Professor Tore Samuelsson is working on a book project entitled "Genomics and bioinformatics - an introduction to computational tools". The book deals with bioinformatics, an interdisciplinary science where biology, computer science and mathematics meet. Samuelsson has published extensively within his research area and we regard the book project to be of great concern and that it would be possible to complete the project during the stipend time in the peaceful village Grez-sur-Loing.

Eligibility
Applications for this stipend can be accepted from natural scientists who are active as teachers/researchers at either Chalmers University of Technology, University of Gothenburg or Karlstad University.

Application
Applications listing the applicant's personal details and the post held should be submitted with a brief CV and a description (justification) of the purpose of the stay. There are no specific application forms.
Applications (electronic) must be submitted to the Hasselblad Foundation no later than 15 May the year of application, in the form of a single, merged document (a PDF file). Address: stipendium@hasselbladfoundation.org

Period
November - December

Amount
The stipend amounts to SEK 30,000 and the foundation also pays the rental cost for the accommodation. During the period of the stipend, the holder may also be accompanied by a member of her or his family at no extra charge.

The holder of the stipend must provide her or his own computer for the period. A central Internet connection and printer are provided at Hôtel Chevillon.

Notification
The Hasselblad Foundation will announce who has been awarded the stipend in June the year of application in a press release and through publication on the website.

Previous Recipients of the writing stipend:

2009: Sofia Thorsson, Postdoctoral Fellow in Physical Geography at the University of Gothenburg

2008: Lars Öhrström, professor of inorganic chemistry at the Chalmers Institute of Technology, Gothenburg

2007: Jan O. H. Swantesson, PhD, assistant professor at  Karlstad University