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PhD awards

Sofie H. Lautrup and Oskar Franch were awarded the Kjeld Marcker PhD Award 2019 at the annual meeting of the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics on Friday 28 June 2019. 

The chairman of the PhD programme committe Ernst-Martin Füchtbauer presented the awards to the two prize winners with the following reasons for the selection of these two former PhD students:

Sofie Lautrup has a number of publications in journals with high impact factors and presented her work at several international meetings with oral presentations. She was also actively communicated science to the general public, by writing a popular science article, and by frequently teaching elementary and high school students. During her PhD she received several national and international travel grants, including the prestigious Dronning Margrethe II rejselegat. A very important aspect of her additional activities was her engagement in the MBG PhD Association, where she served in the board and actively participated in the planning and coordination of the first three PhD conferences.

Sofie has now a postdoc position at Oslo University.


Oskar Franch has an equally impressive list of publications. He has independently set up a number of international collaborations and worked very interdisciplinary at the boarder of molecular biology and nano-science. Oskar was a member of the MBG institute forum and the MBG PhD program committee, but he was particularly active in the PhD association. He co-organized the PhD conferences, he was among the driving forces in the discussion about the teaching load for MBG's PhD students, he contributed significantly to the analysis of the psychological workplace assessment and the governmental report on he quality of Danish PhD education.

In addition, he was also one of the driving forces to organize the Aarhus 'March for Science' in 2017 and 2018.

Oskar received a Carlsberg fellowship and is now a postdoc at the Delft University of Technology in Holland.