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Article by Mathilde Sejer Bozard
 

Since 2022, NAD has awarded 16 fully funded PhD fellowships annually to talented young neuroscientists from all over the world. The NAD PhD fellows become part of NAD’s unique four-year PhD programme in which the young researchers conduct rotations in three neuroscience laboratories in Denmark, choosing freely from more than 200 research groups.

As another distinctive feature of the NAD PhD programme, the fellowship includes research funding, allowing the PhD fellow to formulate their PhD project in collaboration with their chosen supervisor.  After the pre-PhD year, the NAD PhD fellows are enrolled as PhD students at one of the four universities that are partners in NAD: Aalborg University, Aarhus University, University of Copenhagen and University of Southern Denmark.

“We established the programme based on the Lundbeck Foundation’s long-term goal of attracting and educating the neuroscientists of the future, hereby consolidating Denmark’s international position in the field. It. I am pleased to see how the NAD PhD fellows and the community around NAD has strengthened collaboration between neuroscience research groups in Denmark. This interdisciplinary approach is necessary to ensure the best research and research that benefits patients,” says Jan Egebjerg, Senior Vice President, The Lundbeck Foundation.

With approximately 300 applicants per year, the NAD PhD programme is highly sought after. In the selection process, special emphasis is placed on the applicants’ motivation and prerequisites for bridging research fields as well as basic and clinical neuroscience.

The Lundbeck Foundation has recently granted an additional DKK 222 million to the academy. The grant will primarily finance the awarding of an additional 48 four-year PhD fellowships in the years 2026-2028:

“I am pleased that the new grant from the Lundbeck Foundation allows us to continue the NAD PhD programme. We are very impressed with the skilled and motivated applicants from all over the world who apply for the programme. We select the best PhD students and provide them with the freedom to design their own PhD project in collaboration with different research groups across Denmark. The feedback from the participating laboratories has been overwhelmingly positive, and I am certain that this way of recruiting PhD students elevates Danish neuroscience research,” NAD Scientific Director Jakob Balslev Sørensen says.

In addition to managing the NAD PhD programme, Neuroscience Academy Denmark works actively to promote scientific collaboration in Denmark across neuroscientific research fields and between basic and clinical neuroscience:

Since its inception, NAD has organised of scientific activities for Danish neuroscientists and students, and it has developed a digital networking platform specifically for neuroscientists, designed to provide an overview of the many-facetted and interdisciplinary neuroscience research landscape in Denmark. The new grant ensures that Neuroscience Academy Denmark can continue its work to assemble and elevate Danish neuroscience research in the years to come:

“We are grateful for the continued support from the Lundbeck Foundation, and I am delighted that the foundation recognises the value of Neuroscience Academy Denmark’s initiatives. With the new grant, we can continue to offer NAD PhD students the unique framework that strengthens interaction between research groups and gives the students full ownership of their PhD projects. Additionally, it allows us to advance both new and ongoing projects to encourage collaboration between neuroscience research groups in Denmark,” says NAD Executive Director Nicolas Caesar Petersen.