Five talented Danish researchers have landed in San Francisco
DARE Fellows 2022: Ingrid Wiggers, Ditte Kamille Rasmussen, Camilla Wibrand, Anna Skovgaard Lerche og Christine Marie Haarslev Nielsen.
Five talented medical students from Copenhagen, Odense and Aarhus have traded their studies for new and exciting lives as researchers at prestigious American universities: Stanford University and the University of California in San Francisco (UCSF).
For the eighth consecutive year, the Lundbeck Foundation has awarded pre-graduate scholarships to a group of Danish medical students who will now concentrate their efforts on their project ideas and research ambitions in one of the world’s leading research and entrepreneurship hubs: the San Francisco area of California.
The research of the five students – Ditte, Christine, Ingrid, Anna and Camilla – is wide-ranging, covering topics such as a specific protein associated with blindness and age-related eye disease, brain-protecting treatment after a stroke, new knowledge about the forgotten infectious disease TB, T cells and new targets for a rare autoimmune disease, and the potential of psychedelics in the fields of psychiatry and immunology.
All five are already well under way with their new lives as researchers, and all are noted for their exceptional talent and drive. In collaboration with their supervisors, they submitted proposals for their exciting projects, all of which relate to health sciences, and applied for a place on the programme. Their research adventure has now begun and the sought-after secondments to world-leading laboratories, researching under the wings of strong mentors, have become a reality.
Their tickets include an all-inclusive exchange, one of the distinguishing features of the DARE (Danish American Research Exchange) programme, giving the participants free rein to follow their ambitions and dreams of a research career.
The five students will live together in San Francisco during their entire stay, benefiting from each other’s company.
What does it take to qualify for the programme?
It is no ordinary achievement to be given the opportunity to join the DARE programme in San Francisco. However, the basic requirements are that you are studying medicine at a Danish university and have completed your Bachelors degree. Above-average talent is also a must.
Students must have their projects approved before they leave for the USA and must also have both a Danish and an American mentor lined up for support and guidance. Students will be enrolled either at Stanford University or at UCSF and will attend classes during their entire DARE stay.
Furthermore, students will complete a research project during their secondment, and will, in time, publish the results in an international journal.
The programme - DARE FELLOWSHIP - is run by Innovation Centre Denmark with funding from the Lundbeck Foundation.
The five DARE Fellows 2022
Ingrid Wiggers, Aarhus University:
Can our immune system disclose new therapeutic targets for tuberculosis?
Ditte Kamille Rasmussen, Aarhus University:
She won’t be researching “blindly” but is travelling to San Francisco to train her sights on a particular protein, HTRA1, which is the...
Camilla Wibrand, Aarhus Univesity:
She has traded her medical studies at Aarhus University for life as a researcher at one of the world’s leading universities in the USA...
Anna Skovgaard Lerche, University of Copenhagen:
She is trading the next ten months of her medical studies at the University of Copenhagen for top-level research at UCSF in California...
Christine Marie Haarslev Nielsen, University of Suthern Denmark:
Christine is studying medicine at the University of Southern Denmark. She is taking a break from her studies to conduct research on...
