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Young Elite Researcher Prize awarded to Eva Arnspang Christensen

The Danish Council for Independent Research | Natural Sciences (FNU) has awarded a prestigious Sapere Aude Young Elite Researcher Prize valued at DKK 2.245 million to Postdoctoral Fellow Eva Arnspang Christensen (36), Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, for her research project ‘Aquaporin assembly and regulation: studied by super-resolution imaging and single protein tracking’.

Eva Arnspang Christensen has been granted DKK 2.245 million from the Sapere Aude programme to learn advanced microscopy techniques at the National Institutes of Health, USA (photo: Lisbeth Heilesen)

“It’s a great honour to be selected for the Sapere Aude programme. I regard it as both an acknowledgement of my work to date, and an important motivation factor for my future efforts,” says Eva Arnspang Christensen. “The grant makes it possible for me to spend a year as a visiting researcher at the Lippincott-Schwartz Laboratory, National Institutes of Health (NIH), USA, which is among the absolute elite in the area of microscopy of living cells,” she continues.

Studies in advanced microscopy techniques

Eva Arnspang Christensen will use the FNU grant to study super-resolution microscopy techniques for use in detecting individual aquaporin molecules in living cells.

“Being awarded this grant means an enormous amount. The combination of being able to go the source of super-resolution microscopy to learn the technique, and then come back to set up the technique in Denmark is optimal for my project and my future research career,” she says.

Eva Arnspang Christensen is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Aarhus University, where she works with Associate Professor Lene Niemann Nejsum’s research group via a grant from the Lundbeck Foundation.

“Collaborating with the Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz research group is a fantastic opportunity. At the NIH, Eva will learn the latest advanced microscopy techniques, which will give us an opportunity to study proteins at a resolution that’s ten times better than anything we can manage at present. And this makes it possible to follow individual proteins in living cells,” says Associate Professor Nejsum.

Following her research period in the USA, Eva Arnspang Christensen plans to use her Sapere Aude grant to set up the following super-resolution techniques at Aarhus University: 1) photoactivated localisation microscopy (PALM), 2) livePALM and 3) bleaching/blinking assisted localisation microscopy (BaLM).

Eva Arnspang Christensen completed her PhD in Membrane Biophysics at the University of Southern Denmark in 2010. Her studies included research periods at the University of Sydney, Australia, and McGill University, Montreal, Canada.

About Sapere Aude

Sapere Aude is a research career programme that aims to develop the skills of the most talented researchers, nationally and internationally. The aim is to create career paths and keep hold of the most talented young researchers. Read more about the programme.


For more information, please contact

Postdoctoral Fellow Eva Arnspang Christensen
Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Aarhus University
arnspang@mb.au.dk – +45 2872 3828