Welcome to DARA’s First PhD Fellows

It is a great pleasure to welcome the first cohort of students to DARA. Each of the grantees embody a core ambition of the academy: to support passionate and excellent PhD students pursuing transformative projects. We are looking forward to following this first cohort of students and the many to come.

We are grateful to the Novo Nordisk Foundation for making DARA and these stipends possible. At the same time, we are also deeply aware that we are standing on the shoulders of the existing thematic academies (DDEA – Danish Diabetes and Endocrine Academy, DCA – Danish Cardiovascular Academy, and DDSA – Danish Data Science Academy) and benefitting from learnings and established structures.

Collaborations between disciplines are more important than ever. Most scientific breakthroughs require elaborate interdisciplinary teamwork, and our ambition in DARA is to help train future researchers to combine their deep specialized knowledge with a scientific outlook and curiosity towards other disciplines.

In the board, we are well aware of the huge assignment in front of us, not least the task it will be to build a coherent community of PhD fellows within and between disciplines and institutions. Nonetheless, we are determined to do our best to ensure that DARA fulfils its potential as a national hub for talent development and world-class PhD training.                

Susanne Mandrup

Chair of the Board of Directors

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