In 2020, the grant is supported by the Carlsberg Foundation as part of a special distribution on account of the celebration of the 200th anniversary for HC Ørsted’s discovery of electromagnetism. Therefore, it will be awarded to four young researchers this year.
Nikolaj K. Mandsberg, who is a PhD Student in the IDUN section headed by Professor Anja Boisen at DTU Health Tech, was recommended for the memorial grant due to his talents within nano- and microtechnology.
Nikolaj is an interdisciplinary researcher, who, based on physics, attacks basic scientific issues as well as technical issues. Currently, he is working with the development of capsules for collecting bacterial cultures from the gut, among many other things.
He has studied and done research at CalTech and Tokyo University, and was a Fulbright Fellow at Harvard University. Although he will not complete his PhD until 1 April 2021, he has already published nine articles in internationally recognized scientific journals.
“Being supported in the pursuit of your passion is wonderful and I feel very honored about receiving this prestigious grant. To me, my award of Kirstine Meyer’s Memorial Grant confirms that I am well on my way in my scientific endeavors and that my research intuition is in tune with interests of society. Now I will continue doing what I like the most – working at the interface between multiple disciplines to develop new science and solve problems”, Nikolaj K. Mandsberg says.
(Photo by Jesper Scheel)
The full name of the Kirstine Meyer's grant is "Associate Professor, Dr.Phil., Mrs. Kirstine Meyer, f. Bjerrum's Memorial Grant" and it was founded in 1942 by a circle of colleagues, who wanted to "put a memory of her that could bring testimony to future times of the admiration, hoisting and affection that contemporaries nurtured for her". Among the scholarship's founders were colleagues Niels and Olaf Bjerrum and his fellow students Hanna Adler, who together with Kirstine Meyer in 1892 had become the first female master of physics, and Niels Bohr signed the Statutes on behalf of the Society for the Dissemination of Natural Science. Kirstine Meyer received the Danish Academy of Sciences’ gold medal in 1899 and became Denmark's first female dr.phil. in physics in 1909. Throughout her life, she was committed to school legislation, and she had a decisive influence on the design of chemistry and physics education in high school.
The scholarship was last awarded in 2014, and among the recipients over time are Astronomer Anja C. Andersen, Ice Core Scientist Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, Nobel Laureate Aage Bohr and the later President of the University of Copenhagen, Ove Nathan.
Source: Selskabet for Naturlærens Udbredelse