The winners of the 2020 Aarhus University Research Foundation PhD Award

Honour Bestowed on a Handful of New Researchers

Read about some of the most interesting research results produced by the latest PhD year group at Aarhus University. The five researchers each receive the AUFF Talent Prize for their PhD projects.

By Filip Graugaard Esmarch

This year, for the 18th time, the Research Foundation is handing out its awards to particularly talented newly graduated PhDs from AU. In the following pages, we will talk about the researchers' results which, without exception, have attracted international attention.

Again this year, the Aarhus University Research Foundation is pleased to be able to hand out PhD awards to five recipients who have achieved outstanding results during their research training. The PhDs will each receive DKK 50,000 in recognition of their research and the dissemination hereof.

The University and the Research Foundation have mutually selected the most worthy candidates. In this context, the committee has looked at both the theses themselves and the more overall efforts by the award recipients during their research training.

This time, the honour goes to an agroecologist, a doctor, a literary historian, a mathematician and an economist. They have contributed valuable knowledge on measuring of functional soil properties, treatment of depression, children's literature across media, understanding of time series data and financial risk management, respectively.

Facts about the PhD Award

  • The Aarhus University Research Foundation instituted its annual PhD award in connection with the University's 75th anniversary in 2003.
  • Based on recommendations from the faculties, Aarhus University's graduate schools recommend a number of candidates, after which the University Management and the Research Foundation make the final recommendation.
  • All the recipients have completed their PhDs the previous year, in this case in 2019.

 

Cecilie Hermansen

NEW SHOURTCUTS TO PREDICTING FUNCTIONAL PROPERTIES IN A SOIL LAYER
SOIL PHYSICS

Using new analytical methods, Cecilie Hermansen has made it easier to assess the risk that spraying a specific piece of land with pesticides will lead to contamination of the drinking water.

In her PhD research, Cecilie Hermansen has expanded the number of soil properties that can be measured by means of a so-called visible near-infrared spectroscopy (vis-NIR). The spectrometer measures the amount of light reflected from a soil sample, and the shape of the displayed spectrum can reveal many things regarding the constituents of the earth.

‘In my PhD I have added a package of functional soil properties to the list of soil properties that can be determined by vis-NIR, and that you need to know to assess the sensitivity to pesticide leaching’, she says.

it is expensive and time-consuming to determine the functional properties when using more traditional laboratory methods. However, Cecilie Hermansen has succeeded in establishing a mathematical model which in a few minutes can predict the adsorption properties of the soil based on the shape of the spectrum from a vis-NIR measurement. The modest time consumption is in itself a major step forward as a significant number of soil samples are usually needed because the properties of the soil may vary quite a bit over a short distance.

‘The other really smart thing is that once you have the spectrometer measurements, then you have a database that can also be used to calculate the other soil properties you would like to know, i.e. based on the same measurements’, she says.

Ole Köhler-Forsberg

ANTI-INFLAMMATORY DRUGS CAN IMPROVE THE TREATMENT OF DEPRESSION 
PSYCHONEUROIMMUNOLOGY

Doctor Ole Köhler-Forsberg has shown that the immune system can be so closely linked to mental disorders that anti-inflammatory drugs can help treat depression.

The research field of psychoneuroimmunology was in its infancy when Ole Köhler-Forsberg began working on it. Here, you examine the interaction between systems, each of which is extremely complex: The psyche, the brain and the immune system. In his PhD, Ole Köhler-Forsberg has helped to consolidate this field: Two comprehensive studies have enabled him to conclude that many different drugs that are affecting the immune system may simultaneously have antidepressant effects.

‘In our meta-analysis we collected the results of all clinical studies in the research field and looked at what they tell us about different drugs and patient groups. Based on these studies of a total of about 10,000 people, it is clear that anti-inflammatory treatment actually does have an effect on depression’, says Ole Köhler-Forsberg.               

An important finding in this context is that almost all the many types of drugs used in the tests appear to have the desired effect, including rheumatoid arthritis and cholesterol-lowering drugs.

Subsequently, Ole Köhler-Forsberg has substantiated these findings through extensive studies of Danes via the Danish Health Authority's registries which provide unique opportunities for investigating combinations of drugs across an entire population.

Sarah Mygind

THE MEDIA HAS AN IMPACT IN THE WAY WE READ
TRANSMEDIA CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

Sarah Mygind has contributed substantive theory and concept formation about the importance of digitalisation for literature and reading.

The concept of ‘cluster works’ has the potential to gain general acceptance within literature research. Until now, a word has been missing to describe a rather fundamental phenomenon, i.e. that a children's literary narrative is published in multiple media at the same time, such as a paperback, e-book, audiobook and perhaps with associated fiction universes with animated films, apps or computer games. The creator of the concept, PhD Sarah Mygind, explains it this way:

‘Most often, it is clear that some thought has been given to what the individual media is able to do. You often conceive of your narratives across media right from the beginning. And while, on the surface, it may be the same narrative, each version will contribute significantly to the overall picture. For a literary researcher, this also means that a narrow view of literature linked exclusively to the printed book will be distinctly inadequate’.

Sarah Mygind has analysed and interpreted specific cluster works in her thesis, but at the same time she has included literature sociology and linked it to a more media-scientific approach.

‘I would like to know the aim of the texts, how they are made, and how they are received. So, I am interested in some interaction between the work-internal and the work-external. Therefore, it has been a matter of getting the disciplines to communicate in a meaningful way’, she explains.

Mikkel Slot Nielsen

NOW BIG DATA CAN BE BETTER UTILISED IN PROBABILITY CALCULATIONS
PROBABILITY THEORY

PhD Mikkel Slot Nielsen has solved some important problems regarding the understanding of time series. And then he has helped Vestas assess the risk of extending the service life of their wind turbines.

In his PhD project, mathematician Mikkel Slot Nielsen has worked with the further development of highly specialised methods within probability theory. His thesis contains as much as eight published articles about models regarding the understanding of time series data, i.e. data arranged based on measurements over time. With such models you can calculate probable scenarios for the future development of the measurements – but the classic models within the field fall short when using very large data sets where you have, for example, measured a stock price every minute rather than every day.

‘With the type of models that I have looked at, I have shown how to make a similar setup that allows for a lot of observations. In this way, the method utilises big data and strong computing power better than what has been possible so far’, says Mikkel Slot Nielsen.

The ninth and final paper in Mikkel Slot Nielsen's thesis describes an industrial collaboration with Vestas, which, based on data from wind turbine sensors, needed help to calculate how much wear and tear a wind turbine will experience through its service life, and thus how long you can justify to keep it running. For this purpose, Nielsen provided a carefully adjusted machine learning algorithm suitable for this particular type of risk assessment.

Martin Thyrsgaard

HOW DOES FINANCIAL RISK DEVELOP OVER A DAY OF TRADING
FINANCIAL ECONOMETRICS

Using PhD Martin Thyrsgaard's methods allow you to study more precisely what is going on in the financial markets and to better understand the importance of how the markets are organised.

Throughout most of his PhD studies, Martin Thyrsgaard has – by means of complicated mathematics – grappled with accepted standards within market structure research using high-frequency financial data. These huge data sets include, among other things, all completed transactions as well as current bid and offer prices. Through research into the data, you learn more about how the markets work, and thus also how to organise them appropriately

‘How does the very organisation of the financial markets affect the dynamic development of prices and risks during a day of trading? And how does it affect the way in which different players are acting?’

This is how Martin Thyrsgaard verbalised some of the key issues in his thesis.

‘Our result is a step on the way to understanding the impact of the stock exchanges’ opening and closing hours on the risk development throughout the day. Traditionally, it has been assumed that the relative uncertainty surrounding a stock price at any given time of the day should be the same across the days of trading. You would like to be able to have such a pattern available when studying how a particular announcement from the central bank affects the uncertainty. But our statistical tests show that it is not that simple, because the pattern is actually not constant from day to day’.