Where are they now
Welcome to our new series Where are they now, where we get a glimpse of the lives of some our former DDA-funded researchers. More specifically, you will learn about which career paths they have taken, and where they have ended up now.
We find the stories of the researchers very inspiring, and hope you do too.
Isabelle Steineck
| Protocols, Perseverance and Plot Twists "Isabelle Steineck’s CV now says Doctor and Author of Crime. Isabelle Steineck finds that the process of publishing a PhD and publishing a book shares more similarities than differences: They both require protocols, perseverance and the additional plot twist. However, they differ on one liberating aspect: Fiction sets you reference-free. In this article, we have asked Isabelle Steineck how a Doctor becomes a novelist." |
Piotr Dworzynski | One day, out of the blue, he was contacted by a man he had once described his research to. "In the future, he pictures himself perhaps being attached to the company, but also to academia. ‘In an increasing number of settings, one could combine work in the industry with academic research. Each side could greatly benefit from leveraging expertise developed in the other. I see my work and research as a way to repay Danish society. I began my studies in Lodz, Poland, and I came to DTU through a cancellation – I was supposed to go to Wales on an Erasmus exchange, but it fell through." |
Esben Søvsø Szocska Hansen
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"So, I was dealing with everything from anaesthetizing the pig to invasive heart pumping function measurements, the heart blood clot, then the hyperpolarized MR scan and finally the removal of the heart for final assessment. It makes for a very packed experiment day, of course, but then it helps when the cardiologist tells me not to tell the other cardiologists I’m doing it all myself’, says Esben with a laugh" |
Mads Kjølby | While others were stocking up on toilet paper, they set up a trial in record time "In March last year, while many other Danes were stocking up on toilet paper, Mads Kjølby, Ole S. Søgaard and their team set up an international trial in just three weeks and one day – and what’s more, they did it with a drug that was not approved in either the USA or the EU, but only in Japan and South Korea, and with almost all the information about it written in Japanese or Korean." |
Rugivan Sabaratnam | He wanted to put himself to the test in an international setting "I’ve always wanted to work abroad as a postdoc, first and foremost to get lots of methodological experience, and then to put myself to the test in an international setting. So, as they wanted me back, and as at the same time I was really impressed with the research, the methods and the techniques and the fantastic working environment and supervision at Oxford, it all worked out nicely’, he says." |
| Went directly from a Bachelor’s degree to a PhD at Harvard "But there are big differences between working in industry and working at a university. You have more responsibility in industry, and people listen when you propose new areas of activity. They think the suggestions are interesting in academia, too, but realising ideas is often limited by lack of funding." |
Theresia Schnurr
| The researcher with success and no career plan "As already mentioned, Theresia hopes her results will be of benefit to patients, but she has no direct collaboration with the industry. ‘I actually applied for a job in the industry, I just didn’t get it’, she says. She also admits that she barely knew what kind of job she wanted in the industry – and she has discussed her ambivalence with Torben Hansen, among others – but in any case it is now settled that she will remain in the university world for the next few years." |
