Danish Origins of Life Initiative (DOLI)

The Danish Origins of Life Initiative (DOLI) is an initiative to strengthen research in the origins of life across all disciplines within Denmark and abroad. DOLI was officially founded in 2025. Please sign up for DOLI’s updates or let us know if you have news or events that we should post on this website. Contact DOLI here.

Join the upcoming PhD summer school Dust2DNA (Copenhagen, 17-21 August 2026) - Dust2DNA is a one-week course, aimed at PhD students, that covers the journey from interstellar dust to habitable planets and the conditions for the origins and evolution of life.

Past events:

In 2025 DOLI hosted the 2-day Danish Origins of Life Symposium (25-26 August 2025) in Copenhagen (see photo).

News and Events

27 March 2026 (Aarhus) - Research Meeting on Simulating Life-Like Systems. At the workshop we will work on bridging the theoretical and experimental research within this area.

11–12 June 2026 (LMU Munich) - Molecular Origins of Life, Munich (MOM 2026) explores one of science’s most fundamental questions: How did life begin? (registration deadline: 1 June 2026)

17-21 August 2026 (Copenhagen) - Dust2DNA: A one-week course, aimed at PhD students, that covers the journey from interstellar dust to habitable planets and the conditions for the origins and evolution of life. (registration deadline: 31 May 2026)

20 – 22 August 2026 (Nice, France) - Biochirality across scales is the first interdisciplinary meeting dedicated to chirality in biology, exploring how this fundamental property - from molecules to cells and whole organisms - shapes life.

Passed events

26-29 August 2025 (Copenhagen) - Multipliciy in Young Stars a conference held in Copenhagen.

25-26 August 2025 (Copenhagen) - The Danish OOL Symposium: Our 2-day OOL symposium on interstellar catalysis, planet formation, prebiotic chemistry, self-assembly, autocatalysis, and the onset of evolution hosted by DOLI.

18-22 august 2025 (Copenhagen) - Dust2DNA: A one-week course, aimed at PhD students, that covers the journey from interstellar dust to habitable planets and the conditions for life.

10 June 2025 (Aarhus) - AUNAB interdisciplinary workshop: A one day workshop on the historical perspectives of engineering life in science, literature and art.

Relevant networks and initiatives

Aarhus University Network for Artificial Biology (AUNAB) - AUNAB is an Interdisciplinary Research Network funded by Faculty of Natural Sciences, Aarhus University to promote the exchange and interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers from different departments, support the coordination and knowledge exchange with respect to academic and/or strategic initiatives and provide an inviting and stimulating platform for young researchers and new faculty at AU on the topic on Artificial Biology.

Origins of Life Initiative Munich (OLIM) - OLIM (lat. 'formerly'; 'once') is a Munich network to explore the origins of evolution. The aim is to find experimental facts that unveil the first steps that allowed molecules to evolve autonomously into living systems. We want to reconstruct these first steps in the lab, using experiments to bridge from dead molecules to the living state of matter.

Heidelberg Origins of Life Initiative (HIFOL) - The Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), together with the Max-Planck-Institute for Nuclear Physics (MPIK), the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS) and the University of Heidelberg, has just established HIFOL - the new Heidelberg Initiative for the Origins of Life. HIFOL brings together top researchers from astrophysics, geosciences, chemistry, and life sciences to foster, strengthen and bundle scientific efforts to unravel one of the most challenging mysteries in the universe: what are the conditions for the origin of life?

Centre for Origin and Prevalence of Life (COPL) - The COPL is the interdisciplinary research and teaching centre at ETH Zurich focusing on life in the Universe. Established in 2022, COPL brings together more than 40 research groups from seven different departments at ETH Zurich and the Paul Scherrer Institute. Through this collaborative approach, the Centre facilitates ambitious and innovative research and teaching activities to comprehensively address fundamental questions such as (1) how did life on Earth begin, (2) how did it develop and proliferate and (3) whether life exists on other planets.