Newly appointed professor will help solve some of the mysteries of diabetes
Daniel Witte has just been appointed as professor at the Department of Public Health, Aarhus University. Here he will continue his research into diabetes.
Why do so many people get diabetes? Why do far fewer of them die of the disease? How can we find those who are at risk of developing the disease? How do we prevent diabetes?
These are some of the questions that the newly appointed professor Daniel Witte must help to answer in collaboration with his colleagues at the Department of Public Health at Aarhus University.
Daniel Witte’s professorship will be financed by the Danish Diabetes Academy, which has selected not only Daniel Witte, but also the field of research, the university and the department following a very thorough process.
"There has been a great deal of interest in the professorship and our international consultancy council agreed that a professorship in the epidemiology and demography of diabetes could further improve Danish diabetes research," says Tore Sønne Christiansen, Managing Director of the Diabetes Academy.
The burden of diabetes must be reduced
The professorship has been placed at the Department of Public Health, where they are looking forward to working with Daniel Witte.
"We believe that having Daniel Witte here with us will allow us to utilise the knowledge found in public registers and established cohorts even better and more sophisticatedly than previously,” says Professor Anneli Sandbæk from the department.
She points out that Denmark has come a long way when it comes to optimising the treatment of diabetes, but that with the many new diabetics both in Denmark and around the world, we are compelled to find new methods of attack to reduce the burden of diabetes.
Daniel Witte is Dutch, but he has previously worked for four years at the Steno Centre in Copenhagen. He comes to Aarhus from Luxembourg, where he has been managing a large-scale project called "The Luxembourg Cohort".
He trained as a medical doctor at Utrecht University and graduated in 2000, became a specialist in clinical epidemiology in 2002 and gained his PhD in 2003. His field of research has always been diabetes and its complications, also between 2003 and 2008, when he was associated with University College London.
Further information
Professor Daniel Witte
Aarhus University, Department of Public Health
Tel.: +31 6284 23150
daniel.witte@au.dk