The Novo Nordisk Foundation has awarded a grant of DKK 500 million to establish a national PhD academy focusing on talent development and researcher education across disciplines. The Academy will be located at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU), and its activities are targeted at PhD students from across the university sector in Denmark.
The Faculty of Science at SDU has developed the Danish Advanced Research Academy (DARA) with the aim of strengthening researcher education by offering PhD students an excellent educational environment that combines groundbreaking research with international networks and broad academic coverage.
The Academy will educate young researchers across multiple disciplines, enabling them to develop the necessary skills to address future societal challenges. SDU will manage the grant for the Academy with the aim of ensuring that DARA becomes a national platform promoting research collaboration and talent development across research institutions in Denmark.
For several years, the Novo Nordisk Foundation has supported academies within specific disciplines, with a high proportion of the activities directed towards PhD students, including awarding scholarships. Currently the Novo Nordisk Foundation supports the Danish Diabetes and Endocrine Academy, the Danish Cardiovascular Academy, and the Danish Data Science Academy. However, when the grants to theses academies expire, the academic activities directed towards the PhD students will be incorporated into DARA, which will offer both fully-funded and partially-funded PhD scholarships.
“The Danish Diabetes and Endocrine Academy, the Danish Cardiovascular Academy, and the Danish Data Science Academy have made a significant contribution to educating the next generation of experts within their respective fields. DARA will draw on the experiences from the three academies and work purposefully to promote the interdisciplinary education of future researchers,” says Martin Ridderstråle, Senior Vice President for Medical Science at the Novo Nordisk Foundation.
Søren Nedergaard, COO at the Novo Nordisk Foundation, explains the motivation for establishing the new academy.
What motivated the Novo Nordisk Foundation to support the establishment of DARA?
We are experiencing an increasing interest in creating opportunities for young research talents working across traditional disciplines. DARA will enable talented PhD students to define their own projects that span disciplines or otherwise do not fit predefined themes. Scholarships for original and interdisciplinary ideas driven by the PhD students themselves have been lacking, and we want DARA to offer these.
What are the advantages of bringing the PhD students together in one national academy?
A unified academy makes it easier to work across multiple disciplines. This means that talents can do a PhD that, for example, spans natural sciences and health sciences or across disciplines within health sciences.
There is also a very practical administrative advantage. We can simply make better use of the resources in a unified academy in terms of administrative support and support for the PhD students. This is a significant part of the reason for consolidating the academies we have supported thus far within three separate disciplines, and for adding even more disciplines.
How will the interdisciplinary element in DARA be most strongly expressed?
DARA should ideally be an academy that attracts new, groundbreaking ideas that we had not thought of previously. We have experienced a great demand for non-specific funding for the education of talented PhD students within areas in which students can define their own project. We want to DARA to provide this opportunity.
What will happen to the three academies that Novo Nordisk Foundation has supported so far?
PhD activities under the auspices of the three existing academies will gradually be incorporated into DARA. In this way, PhD education within the topics of the existing academies will continue. Additionally, DARA will provide better opportunities to work across disciplines and provide new perspectives on a specific PhD education.
How will the experiences created with the current academies be used in the work with DARA?
It is largely the same universities collaborating in DARA as in the existing academies. Therefore, there will be a focus on continuing the experiences and competencies that have already been built up in the existing academies.
Why was SDU chosen to host DARA?
SDU was chosen because its campus in Odense houses all the university’s faculties and has a long tradition of research collaboration across scientific boundaries. The University has also had great success with the administration of the Danish Diabetes and Endocrine Academy, which is also nationwide.
What are the options for other foundations and organisations that wish to co-finance DARA?
They are welcome to contact us! DARA is designed to incorporate funding from sources other than the Novo Nordisk Foundation. We would like to bring more partners on board and hope that the DARA model can be extended to additional disciplines. At the Novo Nordisk Foundation, we focus on natural sciences, technical sciences, and health sciences. If more partners join DARA, this would create new and different opportunities.