DTU has appointed Professor and current Deputy Head of Department Søren Kegnæs as the new Head of DTU Chemistry, with effect from 1 November 2026.
Søren Kegnæs has been employed at DTU Chemistry for more than 20 years and has held positions including researcher, Professor, Head of Section, Head of Innovation and, most recently, Deputy Head of Department.
DTU’s President, Anders Bjarklev, highlights Søren Kegnæs’s combination of research and leadership skills:
“Søren Kegnæs is a strong researcher and an experienced leader with a solid understanding of DTU Chemistry. For many years, he has worked with great dedication on research, innovation and education, and has a clear vision of both the academic opportunities and the people who will bring them to fruition,” he says.
According to Søren Kegnæs himself, he is taking over a department that is academically strong. But the world around the department has changed, and this presents new challenges:
“It is not necessarily that we have to do things differently. But the world has changed. Digitalisation and AI play a completely different role, and when we talk about European leadership, critical technologies and access to raw materials, we are facing a different reality today,” he says.
Innovation and cross-departmental collaboration
Innovation has been a key focus of Søren Kegnæs’ work at DTU Chemistry, and it will remain a priority in his new role as Head of Department. Among other things, Søren Kegnæs aims to strengthen collaboration with the rest of DTU and forge more links between researchers across departments.
“If you bring the right people together, some very exciting things can suddenly emerge,” he says.
A supportive environment and greater visibility
According to Søren Kegnæs, these high academic ambitions can only be realised if the conditions at the department are right:
“My most important task is to ensure that the staff at the department and our students thrive and have the conditions that enable them to perform,” he says.
Research is a competitive environment, and Søren Kegnæs therefore sees it as an important management task to create a good working environment for staff. This involves, amongst other things, giving researchers and lecturers the time and space to focus on their core tasks.
At the same time, he wants to place greater emphasis on how DTU Chemistry communicates the work being carried out at the department:
“We need to get better at disseminating the research we do and making it more visible – to industry, funding bodies and the general public.”
This increased visibility should also help to strengthen recruitment. By demonstrating more clearly that DTU Chemistry is a place where people work ambitiously on some of the world’s major challenges, he hopes to attract more young people to the field of chemistry.
