WASP-WISE Nest proposal approved
Assistant Professor Pedro Zuidberg Dos Martires and Professor Luc De Raedt* have just had a WASP-WISE Nest proposal approved for the END-PFAS project. It is an interdisciplinary initiative that brings together artificial intelligence, chemistry and materials science to address one of the persistent environmental challenges of our time: PFAS.
There were in total 43 proposals submitted for the WASP-WISE 2026 call for NEST 2 (Novelty, Excellence, Synergy, and Teams) and 4 got funded. The Örebro University researchers Pedro Zuidberg Dos Martires and Luc De Raedt work in a consortium together with Ergang Wang (Chalmers), Moyses Araujo (Karlstad), Maria Abrahamsson (Chalmers) and Moa Johansson (Chalmers).
The call is in total 24M SEK over 4 years, Pedro Zuidberg dos Martires and Luc De Raedt was granted 6.5M SEK in total.
About the Call
WASP-WISE 2026 call for NEST 2 (Novelty, Excellence, Synergy, and Teams), are joint projects that span across the thematic profiles of WASP and WISE. A NEST shall address a specific strategic high-priority research challenge with international impact and visibility that requires the combined competence of a multidisciplinary team of investigators to be solved. Scientific novelty, originality and impact, as well as the relevance to Swedish industry and/or society are key elements.
About the END-PFAS project
PFAS are a group of synthetic chemicals widely used in everyday products because of their resistance to water, heat and other environmental influences. However, these same properties also make them exremely difficult to break down. Once released, PFAS can persist in the environment and accumulate in animals and humans, earning them the nickname “forever chemicals”.
END-PFAS aims to find a way to destroy these persistent chemicals rather than merely remove them from contaminated water and soil. At the heart of the project is the search for photocatalysts, special molecules that use light energy to trigger chemical reactions capable of breaking PFAS down into less harmful substances.
Finding the right molecules is a major scientific challenge. There are countless possible molecular structures, but only a few are likely to have the required properties. By combining expertise from the WISE and WASP research programmes, the project will use AI to accelerate the search for promising molecules.
In the long term, END-PFAS aims to pave the way for sustainable technologies that destroy “forever chemicals” rather than simply move them elsewhere, while advancing AI-based methods for scientific discovery that could help address other environmental challenges.
*Luc De Raedt is a Wallenberg Guest Professor in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at Örebro University.