A flurry of snow and awards at PhD Day 2024
Hundreds of enthusiastic PhD students braved the winter weather to attend the faculty's traditional PhD Day. The day is a unique opportunity for PhD students and pre-graduate research students to interact across disciplines and to present their research. See all the photos and, not least, who won this year's awards in the article below.
It’s the 19th of January, and the Per Kirkeby Lecture Theatre is filling with expectant and frozen PhD and pre-graduate research students. In the foyer, participants scramble for cups of coffee to warm themselves on as the lecture hall begins buzzing with anticipation. This year's PhD Day is ready to kick off.
At 08:15, Anders Etzerodt, the new chair of the PhD Day organising committee, and Sofie Abildgaard Jacobsen, chair of the PhD Association at Health, welcomed everyone. With such a packed programme, all that was left to do was get things underway, beginning with an international visitor.
A keynote speaker with a word of advice
Dean Unnur Thorsteinsdottir from Iceland researches human genetics. She has received great recognition for her work over the decades, and she is currently vice president of research at the biopharmaceutical company deCODE genetics and dean of the School of Health Sciences at the University of Iceland.
She kicked off PhD Day 2024 with an inspiring keynote presentation about her journey into research and the many interesting projects that deCODE genetics is working on. She concluded her keynote with some advice for students:
"Collaboration is the way forward, and no task in the laboratory is beneath you," she points out.
With those words, it was time to start handing out the awards that accompany PhD Day.
About PhD Day
PhD Day is held each year in January (2022 was postponed to 24 June due to Covid-19)
The aim of the day is to bring PhD students together and create networks across a broad scientific field.
This year's keynote speakers were Unnur Thorsteinsdottir, dean of the School of Health Sciences at the University of Iceland and vice president of research at deCODE genetics, and Jonas Egebart, director general of the Danish Health Authority.
Find out more about PhD Day.
Read more about the three prizes:
The Fogh-Nielsen Prize
The JCD Prize
The 3R Prize
Impressive presentations in the Fogh-Nielsen competition
Three prizes are traditionally awarded at PhD Day: the Fogh-Nielsen Prize, the JCD Prize for supervisor of the year and the 3R Prize for the most animal friendly research.
The key criteria for the 3R concept are 'Refinement, Reduction and Replacement', and unfortunately, the committee assessed that none of the project descriptions sufficiently met one or more of the 3R criteria. For these reasons, the committee did not recommend awarding a 3R prize in 2023.
The Fogh-Nielsen Prize celebrates a PhD student who not only is able to conduct high-quality research, but who also masters the difficult art of communicating their knowledge. Three finalists then compete for the honour of the prize and their share of the DKK 125,000 prize sum.
This year the competition for the Fogh-Nielsen Prize spanned a broad spectrum of topics: Pernille Gro Thrane's "Changes in prognosis after heart attack", Caroline Juhl Arnbjerg's "Care for persons with bipolar disorder in low-resource settings" and Mathis Ersted Rasmussen's "Extending the oncologist's hand with AI in radiotherapy".
Click here to watch the three finalists present their research.
And the winners are...
After three great presentations, the judging panel retired to choose a winner, but the day was far from over. The stage was set for countless pitches, flashtalks and oral sessions around the faculty as well as another exciting keynote presentation by Jonas Egebart, director general of the Danish Health Authority.
After an eventful day, it was finally time to present the prizes and announce the winner of the Fogh-Nielsen competition.
PhD student Caroline Juhl Arnbjerg from the Department of Public Health was the winner and recipient of the Fogh-Nielsen main prize of DKK 75,000. According to the judging panel, she delivered a sharp and vivid presentation about the work she and her PhD twin Emmanuel Musoli-Rwililiza have conducted on psychoeducation in Rwanda.
A project that we have previously covered in Inside Health.
PhD student Pernille Gro Thrane and Mathis Ersted Rasmussen shared second place, receiving DKK 25,000 each. Both students are from the Department of Clinical Medicine.
There is no doubt that a successful PhD project also requires a skilled supervisor. This year, the JDC award for PhD supervisor of the year went to Professor Stine Korreman from the Department of Clinical Medicine and the Department of Oncology at Aarhus University Hospital.
Click here to read Inside Health's portrait of Stine Korreman.
Even before PhD Day 2024, on January 17 and 18, 29 curious PhD students from a variety of health research fields took up the challenge at the graduate school's brand new workshop "Fill up your toolbox for future commercial research collaborations".
The participants received a wide range of tools and methods to promote innovative thinking and a collaborative mindset, and also had the opportunity to present their work in front of their fellow students and a panel at PhD Day.
With the award ceremony and the accompanying gala dinner over, PhD Day 2024 came to a close. However, you can already begin looking forward to January 2025 when the next PhD Day will take place.
Contact
PhD administrator Helene Hallas
Aarhus University, PhD Administration at Health
Telephone: +45 93 52 26 09
Mail: heha@au.dk