See the photos from PhD Day 2025
On January 17, 2025, hundreds of students, researchers, and educators gathered for Health's traditional PhD Day. The day featured inspiring lectures, academic presentations, and a celebration of outstanding research. Take a look at the photos and find out who took home this year’s awards.

With a warm welcome in the Per Kirkeby Auditorium, PhD Day 2025 was officially opened by Anders Etzerodt, chair of PhD Day 2025 and associate professor at the Department of Biomedicine, along with Livie Yumeng Li, PhD student and chair of the PhD Association at Health.
After the opening, the day’s first keynote presentation followed. Professor Jens Juul Holst from the University of Copenhagen and the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research focused on the gut hormone GLP-1 and its revolutionary impact on the treatment of type 2 diabetes and obesity.
Next came a series of activities and presentations. Among the day’s highlights was the Fogh-Nielsen Competition, where PhD students competed to present their research in the most compelling way.
After lunch, Professor Aasa Feragen from the Technical University of Denmark took the stage with her keynote presentation on bias and fairness in medical AI.
About PhD Day:
PhD Day is held annually in January. Its purpose is to bring PhD students together to share knowledge and create networks across a wide scientific field.
This year’s keynote speakers were Professor Jens Juul Holst from the University of Copenhagen and the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research, and Professor Aasa Feragen from the Technical University of Denmark.
Read more about PhD Day
Read more about the three awards:
The Fogh-Nielsen Prize
The JCD Prize
The 3R Award
A festive celebration of new research
The last item on the agenda was the gala dinner and awards ceremony, held at the DGI-Huset in Aarhus. Last year’s winner of the JCD Award, Professor Stine Sofia Korreman from the Department of Clinical Medicine, delivered an inspiring speech before the coveted awards were handed out:
The JCD Prize for PhD Supervisor of the Year was, for the first time, awarded to two individuals due to a tie among the nominees.
Associate Professor Louise Hauge Matzen from the Department of Dentistry and Oral Health and Associate Professor Oleguer Plana-Ripoll from the Department of Clinical Medicine shared the award and the prize of DKK 25,000 for their significant contributions as supervisors.
Read more about the recipients here.
The Fogh-Nielsen Competition was won by Postdoc Martin Qvist Rasmussen from the Department of Biomedicine.
His presentation impressed both the judges and the audience, earning him the grand prize of DKK 75,000. He presented a novel antibody-drug conjugate designed to target and destroy cancer cells in patients with mesothelioma after asbestos exposure.
Second Place in the Fogh-Nielsen Competition was shared by Postdoc Kirsten Woolpert and PhD student Anne Kraushaar Martensen, both from the Department of Clinical Medicine. They each received DKK 25,000.
You can watch short videos of the three Fogh-Nielsen finalists presenting their research here and look forward to January 2026, when PhD Day will take place again.