A flood of awards at the PhD Day

Spirits were high with a packed programme on Friday 24 January at this year’s PhD Day at Health. Under the theme 'Innovate and Initiate – from Academia to Business!', the two invited keynote speakers, Paul J. Zak and John Haurum, held their presentations for the 400 or so PhD students, supervisors and research year students, who made sure that the Lakeside Lecture Theatres and the Bartholin building were abuzz with poster presentations, flash-talks and informal get-togethers.

The excitement culminated in the evening’s gala dinner where the winner of the prestigious Fogh-Nielsen competition was found. Here you can see the winner of this year’s Fogh-Nielsen award.

At the gala dinner the JDC award for supervisor of the year was also presented, and the two newly-established awards - the 3R Prize and Health’s Student Research Prize - were also presented for the first time. The PhD Day 2020 had everything. And more. Much more.

The supervisor of the year comes from Biomedicine

The PhD supervisor of the year receives the JCD award, named after professor and former department head at the Department of Clinical Medicine, Jens Christian Djurhuus. This year, the distinguished award goes to Associate Professor Christian Kanstrup Holm from the Department of Biomedicine. Watch the interview with Christian Kanstrup Holm and hear about his approach to good supervision.

The PhD students themselves nominate candidates to the JDC Prize, while a committee with representatives from the PhD Association and the graduate school, among others, select a winner. In addition to the title, the supervisor of the year also receives DKK 25,000.

PhD student receives animal welfare award

The 3R Prize, which aims to encourage better welfare for laboratory animals, is one of the new awards at the PhD Day. It has been established by Health and is given to a PhD student who has made a special effort to either replace, refine or reduce animal experimentation in his or her research.

The first 3R Prize goes to PhD Student Stine Lohmann from the Department of Clinical Medicine. She conducts research into improving the prognosis for kidney transplant patients, and she uses pigs as part of her research. She receives the 3R Prize for her extraordinary efforts to consider animal welfare as a prerequisite for achieving high-quality research that can be transferred to the clinic in a convincing manner.

3R stands for replacement, refinement and reduction and the prize includes a DKK 10,000 cash prize. Read more about the 3R Prize in the article ’New award recognises research that improves animal welfare’.

Awards for emerging researchers

Last year, the academic council established Health’s Student Research Prize. This is the first time the award is being made to students who have submitted particularly good Master's thesis or talent track assignments, while research year students and Master’s PhD students can also be nominated. Students are nominated for Health’s Student Research Prize by researchers and lecturers, rather than as before with the old gold medal essays, when the students themselves also did the nominating.

There are three winners of Health’s Student Research Prize 2020:

• Laura Linnea Määttä, Department of Clinical Medicine, nominated by Troels S. Jensen
• Simon Arvin, Department of Biomedicine, nominated by Keisuke Yonehara
• Victor Dahl Mathiasen, Department of Public Health, nominated by Christian Wejse

In addition, diplomas were also awarded for the best presentations, flash-talks and posters.