It’s not easy but it’s worth it.

If you ask Associate Professor Leonardo Bonetti about the strong collaboration, he is fostering together with Professors Morten L. Kringelbach and Peter Vuust between the DNRF Center for Music in the Brain and the University of Oxford, you will get a profound insight into how you can combine international knowledge and expertise from two different universities into excellent research. And you’ll understand why it is essential for a lot of research nowadays.

Bonetti is a researcher in neuroscience. He is interested in how music can help us understand the brain, particularly in older adults, and his goal is to create a tool that can measure an individual’s risk of developing dementia.

“Neuroscience relies a lot on multidisciplinary collaborations because it involves many different disciplines like psychology, medicine, and, of course, anatomy. And concepts from physics, mathematics, engineering, and computer science are also necessary,” said Bonetti.

He explained how the multi-disciplinary aspect is well-developed in the collaboration between Aarhus and Oxford. “In both Aarhus and Oxford, we have a state-of-the-art magnetoencephalography (MEG) laboratory, where we can collect high-quality data. The idea is to aggregate datasets, to collect them in both Aarhus and Oxford, and to develop, together, novel analytical solutions for a better understanding of the data.”

Bonetti explained that he could also analyze the data in Aarhus, but his Oxford colleagues are experts in this, and having them do the analysis allows him to improve his analytical abilities and develop better analytical tools.

“And it’s also important that I bring the technical skills, analytical solutions, and results developed in Oxford back to the students in Aarhus. In this way, I can contribute to the quality of the research in Denmark.”

It takes a lot of planning and hard work to divide research between two or more countries, but from Bonetti’s point of view, it’s worth the trouble. In the video interview, Bonetti explains more about the important benefits of the collaboration between Aarhus and Oxford.

Read more about Leonardo Bonetti’s research and the collaboration between Oxford and Aarhus

In addition to the DNRF, Leonardo Bonetti is supported by several generous grants from foundations such as the Lundbeck and Carlsberg Foundations and the Linacre College of the University of Oxford.

Meet the New Judges of DNRF’s 2024 Photo Competition

The DNRF's 2024 photo competition, opening on February 20 welcomes three distinguished judges to its panel.

We are happy to welcome Ken Arnold, Andreas Roepstorff, and Charlotte Schwartz. They succeed Christine Buhl Andersen, Louise Wolthers, and Minik Rosing, who have served the DNRF Photo Competition since 2018.

The three recently appointed judges will be in position as the competition draws to a close on May 17, and we look forward to the upcoming collaboration.

Explore their profiles:

Ken Arnold. Quote:“These days, we are overwhelmed with images. But some really stand out – they inform, excite, surprise and move us. I’m looking forward to working with the other judges to find the photos that tell us most about today’s research through the eyes and camera of the researchers behind it."

Ken Arnold is director of Medical Museion and a professor in the Department of Public Health at the University of Copenhagen (also part of CBMR). This world-class university museum combines innovative public exhibitions and events with adventurous and collaborative research in the medical humanities. Until June 2022, he was head of Cultural Partnerships at Wellcome, the London-based charitable foundation focused on health research. Earlier, he helped establish the Wellcome Collection and directed its first decade of programming. He regularly writes and speaks on museums – today and in the past – and on the interactions between the arts, the humanities, and the sciences.

Charlotte Præstegaard Schwartz. Photo: Mathias Ivasson.Quote: "I have accepted the Danish National Research Foundation's invitation to be a judge in their photography competition with the expectation of experiencing photographs that are both aesthetically powerful and carry stories about groundbreaking research in Denmark."

Charlotte Præstegaard Schwartz is a photo curator and research librarian at the Royal Danish Library, where she is responsible for the National Photo Collection. She holds mag.art. and Ph.D. degrees in art history with a focus on the art of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Præstegaard Schwartz specializes in photography and photography history. Her latest book  is Image Modes: Three Historically Grounded Stories about Photography in Contemporary Art.

Andreas Roepstorff. Photo: Lars Kruse AU Kommunikation.

Andreas Roepstorff is director of the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (AIAS) and has been a professor in the Department of Anthropology at Aarhus University since 2010.
Trained in biology and social anthropology, Roepstorff’s research is collaborative and transdisciplinary, engaging with the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and health. He was the co-founding director of the Interacting Minds Centre at Aarhus University. For decades, he has been a strong driving force for cross-disciplinary studies and collaboration. He holds several positions of trust as vice president of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, chairing the Section for Humanities and Social Sciences, and a member of the Council for Technology and Society at the Danish Academy for Technical Sciences (ATV).

Read more and submit to the DNRF’s 2024 Photo Competition

Prestigious awards and remarkable publications

We are very proud and delighted to announce that one of our board members and two of our center leaders have received distinguished awards and published four articles that have attracted international attention.

First, we would like to congratulate Professor Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, one of the DNRF’s new board members, who has received the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Climate Change category.

Dahl-Jensen has been selected for her pioneering research on polar ice samples establishing a “fundamental coupling” between greenhouse gas concentrations and rising air temperatures across the planet over the past 800,000 years.

Second Professor Eske Willerslev, leader of the DNRF Center for Ancient Environmental Genomics, is the director of an international research project that just had four articles published in the same issue of Nature.
By analyzing data on 5,000 ancient human genomes from Europe and Western Asia (Eurasia) from the world’s largest data set to date, the research has uncovered detailed pictures of prehistoric human diversity and migration while proposing an explanation for a rise in the genetic risk for multiple sclerosis. Read more in the press release from the University of Copenhagen  (ku.dk)) and the article in Nature.

And finally, we also congratulate Susanne Mandrup, professor and director of the Center for Functional Genomics and Tissue Plasticity, who has been presented with the prestigious Villum Kann Rasmussen Annual Award.

“Her lifelong journey of discovery into adipose tissue, and the development of fat cells have led to new knowledge about how our genes control important biological processes concerning health and disease,” said the press release from the University of Southern Denmark. A big congrats to Mandrup as well.
Read more about the award and Mandrup’s research.

Farewell and thank you.

This month, we extend a warm welcome to four new board members while bidding farewell to four esteemed colleagues.

December 2023, Professor Emerita Anne Scott Sørensen, Professor Vigdis Broch-Due, Professor Morten Ravn, and Professor Minik Thorleif Rosing left the DNRF board. They have all significantly enriched the DNRF board with their extensive knowledge and unwavering commitment. We express our heartfelt gratitude to them for their valuable contributions.

The DNRF asked each of the four to make a short statement reflecting their experience as board members at the DNRF.

Change of Chair for the DNRF

On December 31, 2023, Professor Jens Kehlet Nørskov will step down as chair of the Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF).

Jens Kehlet Nørskov has been chair of the DNRF for five years, and during that time,  he has helped to ensure that the foundation continuously supports the best Danish research and the development of future research talents. Kehlet Nørskov said that he has been incredibly happy to be able to participate in the development of one of the cornerstones of Denmark’s research structure.

The vice chair will temporarily handle the duties of the chair.

The Danish National Research Foundation will appoint a new chair in 2024. Starting January 1, Vice Chair Christian S. Jensen will handle the chair’s duties until a new chair has been appointed.

Jensen has been vice chair of the DNRF since December 2021; he is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at Aalborg University.

In addition to his employment at Aalborg and Aarhus Universities, Jensen has lived in the United States for six years. He has broad experience with research evaluation and funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation, European Research Council, Max Planck Society, Villum Foundation, and research councils in Norway, Sweden, Great Britain, and the United States.

Four new board members join the DNRF

The Ministry of Higher Education and Science has announced that Minister Christina Egelund has appointed four new members to the board of the Danish National Research Foundation.

The four new board members are:

  • Professor Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, University of Copenhagen
  • Professor Tore Rem, University of Oslo
  • Professor Dorte Juul Jensen, Technical University of Denmark
  • Professor Anna Dreber, Stockholm School of Economics

All four will join the board on January 1, 2024, replacing Professor Morten Ravn, Professor Minik Thorleif Rosing, Professor Anne Scott Sørensen, and Professor Vigdis Broch-Due.

The Ministry of Higher Education and Science writes that when appointing new members, it is important that the candidates have insight into research at an international level and that the entire board has competencies in all main scientific areas as well as financial matters.

The research backgrounds of the four future board members cover economics, the humanities, and the natural sciences, and they are all looking forward to joining the board next year.

Prize rain

Lately, several of our DNRF researchers have received prestigious awards, distinguished nominations and appointments, which we at DNRF are very proud of.

Most recently, Professor Ronnie Glud has been selected to give the Harald Sverdrup Lecture at the Ocean Sciences Meeting February 2024 (Harald Sverdrup Lecture | AGU, Professor ).

Eske Willerslev has received the 2023 Balzan Prize for Evolution of Humankind: https://www.balzan.org/en/prizewinners/eske-willerslev.

Emilio Mármol Sánchez and Antton Alberdi have received the Villum Experiment Grant: https://ceh.ku.dk/news/2023/researchers-secure-villum-experiment-grants-to-explore-new-boundaries/.

Professor Lone Simonsen has received the Fritz Kauffmann Prize: https://ruc.dk/nyheder/professor-lone-simonsen-modtager-aerefuld-pris and has been appointed to the Order of Dannebrog: Pandemiforsker udnævnt til ridder af Dannebrogordenen | Roskilde Universitet (ruc.dk)

“The many prestigious awards and appointments testify to the fact that the researchers at our basic research centers meet the criteria of excellence that are fundamental for a DNRF center grant, and I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate all of the laureates,” said CEO Søren-Peter Olesen.

New look for dg.dk

You may have noticed that the visual appearance of dg.dk has changed. The site has been redesigned. Among other things, we have added a new color and changed the navigation to make it more user-friendly.

“We have wanted for a long time to make it easier for our users to navigate on dg.dk with a more logical structure. And I hope we have succeeded with this new version of the site,” said the DNRF’s communications manager, Lotte Ladegaard Zeuthen.

“In addition, our goal is that the new design reflects, to a greater extent, the fact that we are an innovative and visionary foundation that, through grants, develops talent and produces knowledge that contributes decisively to the development of society.”

We hope that you like dg.dk and find navigation on our website clear and simple, so that you can easily find what you are looking for on the site.

Enjoy!

Do Centers of Excellence create lasting value for posterity?

The DNRF has published two new analyses that shed light on the total value our Centers of Excellence create over time.

At the Danish National Research Foundation, we have funded more than one hundred Centers of Excellence with a lifetime of up to ten years and a budget of up to DKK 10 million annually. The centers must strive to create research and foster talent at a high international level. But there are also special expectations: that excellent research will create lasting value in the form of, for example, a changed research culture.

Normally, the foundation follows the grant holders only while the centers are active, and we do not know much about the impact that Centers of Excellence create in the long run. Therefore, the two new analyses will provide a more comprehensive picture of this value creation based on the following questions:

  • What lasting value do the Centers of Excellence create?
  • What facet of the Centers of Excellence primarily drives this lasting value?
  • How does the Centers of Excellence format promote excellent research?

Centers of Excellence drive research frontiers.

The Centre for Studies in Research and Research Policy (AU) has prepared one of the two analyses, which provides a picture of the impact of the three earliest rounds of the Centers of Excellence (1993-2005) and of how well the Center of Excellence format promotes excellence.

The report concludes that:

  • The impact of the centers’ research remains strong to this day.
  • The centers are particularly good at producing the highly cited research that drives the research frontier.
  • The way the centers are designed is very suited to supporting excellence. With a few improvements, the design is the same as the one used by the foundation today.

The report also concludes, somewhat surprisingly, that more than half of the centers find that private companies and the public sector still use innovations created in the centers, despite the fact that during the period, the focus in the university world was narrowly academic. In general, the foundation’s experience is that interest in innovation accelerated through the 2000s to its current high level. Note that the foundation does not require this.

We are thrilled to learn how the Centers of Excellence that started up to thirty years ago have left such a significant legacy – and it humbles us in relation to current centers whose actual importance, we have to believe, will likewise be fully clear to us only after many years.

Søren-Peter Olesen

CEO

Talents from early centers have created important capacities in today’s research and industry.

The DNRF has also conducted a study of how former Centers of Excellence have contributed to areas that today enjoy political attention, and we have selected centers within quantum science, catalysis, and economics, and technologies such as power-to-X and quantum computers.

The study shows that:

  • The centers have made a remarkable difference, not least as a result of early capacity building of high international quality; and
  • The direct impact is particularly the result of the centers’ training of skilled and highly specialized talent. For example, researchers trained in catalysis centers 30 years ago flocked to industry, and today they occupy leading positions in university research programs in areas such as power-to-X .

Both analyses are mentioned in the foundation’s Annual Meeting publication 2023.
Please follow the link to see the two analyses.

 

The DNRF’s Annual Report 2022

The annual report 2022 of the Danish National Research Foundation is now available and can be downloaded below.

In the report, you can read about the DNRF’s activities and finances, including:

  • Main 2022 news from the foundation (see excerpts below).
  • The 11 new Centers of Excellence.
  • Two new pioneer centers focusing on a green transition within agriculture and power-to-X.
  • New DNRF Chair grants, attracting talents from abroad.
  • The annual DNRF photo competition.

The Nobel Prize to former center leader Morten Meldal (October 2022)

Morten Meldal had been the center leader of the DNRF Center for Solid-phase Organic Combinatorial Chemistry (SPOCC) for five years when he published the paper for which he would receive the Nobel Prize 20 years later.

Following the announcement of his Nobel Prize, Meldal pointed out that “the freedom that comes with the DNRF grants was essential to allow us to follow the clue that ultimately led to the click reaction.”

NATO Quantum Technology Center (April 2022)

In April 2022, it was announced that Denmark had won its bid for a NATO center for quantum technology and that the center would be located at the Niels Bohr Institute. Over the past several years Denmark has built up very strong capacities in research and innovation in quantum science, much of which has been in the form of DNRF Centers of Excellence.

Since 2009, the DNRF has awarded grants to five core quantum centers and several additional centers that also conduct research in quantum science, with a total allocation well beyond 400 mio. DKK.

 

Download the Danish National Research Foundation's Annual Report 2022 here:

Two dancing neurons win 3. prize in the DNRF’s Photo Competition 2023

“This picture shows two neurons in the brain. To me it also shows two couples dancing in a dim light corner of a room,” said postdoc Meet Jariwala from Biotech Research and Innovation Centre (BRIC) about his photo that won third prize in the DNRF Photo Competition 2023.

Photo: Meet Jariwala, Postdoc. Neuroscience. BRIC, University of Copenhagen

“This couple also has some kind of connection to my personal story as well. It gives me a total glimpse of my life, so far, and it reflects how much I have progressed over time” he continued.

“The image also inspires me a lot routinely. Times can be tough in science, and they come with dark phases, but persistence and giving my best during such times re-motivates me. In the same way as these couple neurons who are dancing by themselves in a dark corner, full of energy.  I feel the same vibe.”

Meet Jariwala works with neuropsychiatric research, the branch of psychiatry that investigates the links between mental illness and organic disease of the brain – and his focus is the “schizophrenia mouse model,” which means that he is studying neurons that are active in a mouse model which has schizophrenia-like symptoms. Or put in another way, they mimic human symptoms in the mouse.

Looking for the responsible genes

“Neurons are a specific kind of cells in our brain. In our bodies, the main unit of life is a cell. But in brains the cells are known as neurons,” explained Jariwala and continued:

“The neurons in the picture are long-range neurons. It means they go to different parts of the brain. They pass information from one region to another region in the brain as a kind of relay race where one runner provides another runner with a baton and then runs to the other side. Neurons do the same. They are helpful in delivering information. We are always surrounded by various types of stimuli or sensations. And the neurons help our bodies to process these sensations and deliver the messages to perform, to act, or to move our bodies in a way that it has been processed.”

“The two neurons in the picture are colored because we have encoded a fluorescence in the neurons. So, when the neurons are active it shows fluorescence. These neurons are in the cortex, the brain’s outer layer.”

Jariwala explained that they use this method to identify the key brain regions involved with schizophrenia-like behavior.

“Previous studies have shown that deletion of specific genes is responsible for causing mental disorders. In our lab, we try to understand the genetic level of some neuropsychiatric diseases and identify key candidate genes that are responsible exclusively for schizophrenia. We can’t do this study on humans, so we must do it in a more basic model in a mouse brain which is very similar to the human brain.”

Childhood thriller movies were an early inspiration.

Jariwala’s motivation for going into the field of neuropsychiatry and neural circuits goes back to his childhood:

“As a child I used to watch thriller movies where one of the characters could be someone with a neuropsychiatric disorder. And I was always curious about what really made them different and why they were always presented in a negative way. And I always thought that maybe these people need some help. And I thought that maybe in the future I could help them in some way.”

And when Jariwala later in his youth was introduced to neurons, everything fell into place: “The neurons looked so elegant to me. Like a tree with all its branches. So, I enjoy studying the cells through a microscope where I see really beautiful brain regions, structures, and shapes of the cells. And I also like the old saying: ‘I believe, what I see. ‘I mean sometimes can already see in the behavior of animals or in the microscope that the neurons etc. have different structures and that gives me more information than anything else.”

Even though studying neurons in mice can be far away from the real life and human patients Jariwala believes that working in BRIC brings him a step closer to the patients because the scientists work in close collaboration with the hospitals like the Rigshospitalet, a highly specialized hospital in Denmark, or from a collaborating lab, where we get human tissue samples.

Furthermore, working with mice is to Jariwala, in many ways like working with humans. “I learn more about humans while working with the mice because they require the same attention and care as human beings, so yes, I relate to this a lot.” 

A noble goal

“So, once we identify the genes that cause these neuropsychiatric disorders, the end product would be to rescue these genes or to find drug therapeutics that could cure, or at least alleviate the symptoms of, such neuropsychiatric disorders. Maybe we are not that far from creating a medicine that can specifically help patients with schizophrenia,” explained Jariwala.

“And if you go back to my initial motivation in trying to help a person with a mental disorder, my research has progressed in that same direction. And in the future, I hope that I can contribute with a drug that, together with care and counseling, really can help people with mental disorders.”

Read more about Meet Jariwala’s research

See all three winners of the DNRF Photo Competition 2023

A microscopic organism with great potential wins 2. prize in the DNRF’s Photo Competition 2023

“It is a rare sight,” said Professor Mathias Middelboe about his photo, which won second place in the DNRF’s Photo Competition 2023.

Photo: Mathias Middelboe. Professor. The DNRF Center for Hadal Research, University of Copenhagen

“Like all other organisms, bacteria are also infected by viruses, and the picture shows an infected bacterium right at the moment when these viruses have reproduced themselves inside the cell, and the cell bursts. So the bacterium is caught right at the moment it is killed. The image of the exploding cell was taken with an electron microscope and has been enlarged 80,000 times. I have spent many hours looking down into an electron microscope, and I have taken a lot of electron microscopy pictures, but it is very rare to capture this exact moment – the actual climax of the infection.”

Swapping genes

Professor Middelboe is a marine biologist and researcher in marine viruses, which are the most numerous biological units in the ocean. In every milliliter of seawater, there are around 10 million viruses. And within the last 15-20 years, it has been shown that viruses play a major and important role because they influence a wide range of processes in the marine environment.

“We are interested in understanding the importance of viruses in the ocean. Like all other organisms, bacteria are infected by viruses,” Middelboe explained.

“When a cell full of viruses bursts, some of the organic matter built into the bacteria is released. And because that process takes place millions of times a day in every liter of seawater, it plays a big role in the entire metabolism and recycling of organic matter and nutrients, and it affects the global carbon cycle. A virus that has infected a bacterium can also pick up some of the bacteria’s genes, which then spread to other bacteria when the cell dies. And in this way, viruses also contribute to the diversity and evolution of the microbial community in the ocean and can make other bacteria more adaptable.”

The viral component is an inspiration for new scientific angles

Research on viruses is a relatively new discipline within marine biology. And according to Middelboe, this has really turned our understanding of what regulates circulation and degradation and the role of bacteria in the ocean upside down.

“The first article in this area was published around 1989-90. It was suddenly discovered that viruses were a very important and numerous component of aquatic systems. And now there are many research groups around the world working on this issue,” said Middelboe and continued:

“Back then, I was writing my Ph.D. thesis, and I also took an interest in viruses. I wanted to examine what happens when a cell breaks because it has a viral infection. What happens when the cell content comes out of these bacteria and becomes food for other bacteria? That is, how does the process contribute to the carbon and nitrogen cycle in the ocean? And no one else was really investigating that at this point. I got hooked and have been going down that path ever since. Today, it is a huge research area within microbial biology, especially in the ocean. But the processes are just as important in soils and lakes, etc. And today there is also a growing interest in looking at the role of viruses in our own intestinal system.”

Can viruses become the future alternative to antibiotics?

Middelboe’s research area draws attention because there is a huge need to develop alternatives to antibiotics.

“The viruses we’re looking at are very specific; they only infect certain bacteria. So unlike antibiotics, which usually kill everything, in the future you may be able to use the virus in very targeted disease control, in other words, to kill disease-causing bacteria.”

Middelboe works primarily with fish diseases in fish farming, but there are also other groups in the world that, for example, work with viral control of diseases in humans, poultry, or cattle.

“My research is primarily about gaining a basic understanding of the role of viruses in the ocean. Overall, we need to understand how, for example, climate change will affect the interaction between viruses and bacteria and the effect on the global substance cycle. But it is also important to get a deep understanding of the interaction between viruses and bacteria when it comes to the replication part of our research: If you are going to use specific viruses to kill disease-causing bacteria, you need to know what resistance mechanisms the bacteria have to these viruses. And then there’s all this stuff about how viruses work if we add them to fish food and they get into a fish’s stomach, or we add them to a biofilter to clean the water of disease-causing bacteria.  And we also need to investigate whether, for example, you can continue to use the same viruses, or whether they become ineffective at some point, so you need to find or develop something else. And last but not least, we need to learn more about how the virus infects the bacterium: how fast it goes, how long the effect lasts, etc.

I actually believe that in the long term, we can develop a useful product for the aquaculture industry that can be an alternative to antibiotics, but it will take a few more years before we have optimized the technology and before we know how effectively it works.”

In his right element

Middelboe spends much of his time in the Marine Biological Section at the University of Copenhagen in Elsinore, which also houses the Øresund Aquarium.

“We cover marine biology very broadly here. From deep-sea research to microbes and viruses to fish and algae; we are professors, post-docs, students, and zookeepers.  All the many different things that go on here are inspiring and motivating,” said Middelboe. “And in addition, there is a lot of outside collaboration with researchers who have other specialties and expertise: We often run into things not covered by our expertise. That’s how collaborations come about, and we get in touch with people who know other methods or have different approaches to a problem. In this way, things develop,” he concluded. To the question of what really motivates him in his research, he answered:

“I am really driven by a curiosity to understand these extremely complicated connections in marine ecosystems. The more we dive into it, the more complicated it turns out to be. I find that exciting.”

Mathias Middelboe is affiliated with the DNRF Center for Hadal Research, which works to understand the role of viruses in the deep sea, with a special focus on how they affect the substance cycle and contribute to shaping the microbial communities in these extreme environments.

Read more about Mathias Middelboe’s research

See all three winners of the DNRF Photo Competition 2023

“My biggest drive is the fight against inequality,” says the winner of the 1st prize in the DNRF Photo Competition 2023

“I noticed that image among the pile of images that we got from our fieldwork in Vietnam. It really got to me. It was this expression in her eyes,” explained Professor Tine Mette Gammeltoft about her photo, which has won this year’s photo competition.  The woman in the picture is called Bà Son, a Vietnamese rice farmer.  The picture was taken by Tine Gammeltoft’s Vietnamese colleague Doctor Dung Vũ a few days after Bà Son had one of her legs amputated.

Foto: Dung Vũ, Lecturer at Thái Bình University of Medicine and Pharmacy; VALID research team member & Tine Gammeltoft, Professor at the Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen; VALID Principal Investigator

Doctor Dung Vũ is one of the five Vietnamese researchers working on the ethnographic part of Gammeltoft’s research project VALID:

“VALID focuses on type 2 diabetes in the Vietnamese province of Thái Bình and consists, among other things, of ethnographic fieldwork, where we work with 27 people with diabetes and their families, which we have followed since 2018,” said Gammeltoft. She continued:

“Bà Son is one of the 27 participants in the project, and Dung and I have been visiting her for several years. Dung and Bà Son have developed a close relationship – she probably couldn’t have taken this picture if the two of them had not been that close.”

Almost a global epidemic

The project in Vietnam is funded by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and will strengthen health efforts concerned with chronic disease, which is the focus of Denmark’s strategic sector cooperation in Vietnam. The researchers concentrate on the care given in the home and family, where much of the care takes place.  In VALID, researchers will collect more systematic knowledge about the informal care practiced daily in the family and in the local community.

Gammeltoft herself has worked in Vietnam for 30 years. She first went there in the 1990s, when Denmark opened an embassy in the country and built up a large aid program. Her research at the time was about sexual and reproductive health, but today, it also concentrates on chronic diseases such as diabetes.

“About 10 percent of the world’s adult population has diabetes. So, diabetes is what you could almost call a global epidemic – a global health crisis, in fact – because it’s a disease that affects a lot of people. Why? Because we have gradually arranged our world in a way that promotes diabetes: Our diets are changing – people are moving less. Many live in huge cities where you can’t move. And there is increasing evidence that air pollution also plays a role,” Gammeltoft said.

“I was really happy when I learned that the judges in the photo competition saw this as a picture that tells us something about global health inequality. If you live with diabetes in a low- or middle-income country, you are far more likely to not get the right treatment and end up with serious complications and amputations, as happened to Bà Son. And one of the things that drive me the most in my research is the fight against inequality in health. To be able to identify the dynamics of this inequality, but also to be able to see where hope is, where people gather and do something that can provide better conditions both locally, nationally, and globally.”

Clubs and classes create more knowledge and stronger communities

When it comes to Vietnam, Gammeltoft’s research has shown that there is a massive need for knowledge and a vast uncertainty in the field of diabetes. People with diabetes and their families often live with  unanswered questions and don’t really know where to seek advice about their disease. They cannot always get this knowledge from the Vietnamese healthcare system, where time given to an individual patient is short and the wards are overcrowded and understaffed.

In addition, the disease is still taboo, and there is a tendency that patients do not want to be a burden to their family.

“Bà Son is a good example of the tendencies we have seen in our ethnographic research: She wants to be discreet with her illness, but in this way she easily – indirectly – aggravates it,” Gammeltoft added.

This knowledge has inspired the research team to develop a new initiative in Vietnam – a pilot intervention program – that can help people live a better life with their diabetes. The team has set up diabetes classes and clubs in the villages, and they have developed educational materials that provide the basic knowledge about the disease that research has shown patients and their families lack.

“People meet in the clubs and socialize. And we have arranged classroom training for health workers and individual patients. It has had a huge effect. They report that they feel better. Participants experience less of a stigma and share their concerns with each other to a greater extent.”

A community across borders

VALID is nearing the end of phase 1, and researchers are gathering data from the last five years of research. And when Gammeltoft looks back on the last five years, she is happy about three things in particular:

“In addition to developing the pilot intervention as a model for grassroots health work with diabetes, I am also pleased with the capacity building of young Vietnamese researchers that the project has entailed. I would also like to highlight the knowledge the project has gained about why we humans sometimes act ‘against better knowledge’ in the health sector. For example in Vietnam, people try to care for their families and not be a burden on them, but in the end, they may just be a burden as a consequence of complications and worsening of the disease. The point is that while medical knowledge is obviously important, anthropology shows us why such knowledge is not always enough: sometimes the patient’s life situation makes it socially or emotionally impossible to follow medical recommendations, no matter how clear or medically meaningful they are. For many, it is more important to belong to a group like the family and the community and take care of your loved ones than it is to take care of yourself and your illness.

“And last but not least, lectures in Denmark – about research in Vietnam – have taught me that Danes with diabetes often have the same concerns about not burdening the family and doubts about what is the right treatment, etc. So with our research we can also contribute to creating a kind of global cohesion in this field,” Gammeltoft concluded.

Read more about the research project VALID

See all three winners in the DNRF Photo Competition 2023

The right to free mobility

The freedom to travel across borders has always been essential for our development and survival throughout human history. In the past, geographical and technological limitations determined how we could move around and to where. Today, it is mostly law that governs our access to mobility.

The picture illustrates the world’s airline routes. It also exemplifies how legal rules and restrictions impact global access to air travel and other forms of human mobility.

But how do the different legal rules and structures work together? What unforeseen consequences do they create for people’s behavior and mobility? And what happens when rules collide and create conflicts?

These are some of the subjects that the new DNRF center MOBILE will investigate. The center has just celebrated its official opening, and the head of the center, Professor Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen, is looking forward to bringing together different research branches and building a completely new field of research.

Getting ready for breakthroughs

“One of the major challenges of working in this area is that there is no established field of research, to begin with. Today, those who work with, for example, migration, tourism, or free movement rarely talk to each other,” Gammeltoft-Hansen explained. He continued:

“One of the unique things about a center of excellence is that it creates the opportunity to bring together researchers who would not normally be in the same room. And we can build this core, where we try to get a closer look at the essence of the research and what happens across the boundaries we normally work with in legal research.”

Gammeltoft-Hansen added that the possibility of creating new breakthroughs is also closely linked to the fact that the center tries to set up a different and more interdisciplinary analytical framework that, on the one hand, can refer to mobility research in other disciplines and, on the other hand, use the topic to shed light on general legal issues.

International cooperation ensures local anchoring

MOBILE’s ambition is not only to investigate what mobility rules look like in our part of the world but also to try to understand what the rules might look like in South America or West Africa. Therefore, the center has teamed up with international partners, and in so doing, it has got a head start in ensuring a local anchoring in the different regions they will work in. It will also be important to recruit Ph.D. students and post-docs who understand the legal systems in the different regions.

“I hope that our research can contribute to an understanding of how differently you can design mobility rules and that we will learn more about what happens when we adopt rules in one area that may end up having consequences for all kinds of other forms of mobility in other areas,” Gammeltoft-Hansen concluded.

More about MOBILE

 

DNRF’s 12th Chair Grant funds research in gene regulatory mechanisms

Professor Vijay Tiwari, at the Department of Molecular Medicine, has received a DNRF Chair grant of 10 million DKK to work on revealing gene regulatory mechanisms crucial to the development of cerebral cortex and its disruption in neurodevelopmental disorders.

Professor Vijay Tiwari

Cortical expansion and folding are crucial to brain evolution and function, while defects in these processes associate with neurodevelopmental disorders such as epilepsy and intellectual disability.

– Mammalian brain development involves highly complex and organized sets of events. We aim to reveal gene regulatory mechanisms governing spatiotemporal specification of cell-fates underlying these processes and reveal novel developmental and genetic risk factors for associated disorders, Vijay Tiwari explained.

Read the full press release

Read more about the DNRF Chair Grant

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