Lecturers of the Year
• Professor Peder Klit, DTU Mechanical Engineering
• Professor Ole Christensen, DTU Compute
It takes world-class teachers to train world-class engineers. Two of them are honoured at the Commemoration Day.
Every year, PF crowns the lecturers of the year in the BEng and MSc Eng categories, and this year marks the 25th anniversary of this tradition. The students themselves vote for their favourite lecturers, and this year saw no fewer than 270 nominations go to a total of 70 lecturers! In the nominations, the lecturers were praised for showing great commitment to the teaching, for their ability to encourage the students to play an active part in their education, and for their capacity to communicate difficult material in an inviting and readily comprehensible manner.
Together with the great honour of being crowned Lecturer of the Year, the winners receive a small gift in the form of a Georg Jensen designer watch and a travel voucher worth DKK 25,000.
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Honorary Doctor
- Bjerne S. Clausen, President and CEO of Haldor Topsøe A/S
On behalf of DTU’s Academic Council, President Anders Bjarklev, presented President and CEO Bjerne S. Clausen with an honorary doctorate—Doctor Technices, honoris causa—in recognition of his excellent research with particular emphasis on in situ characterization of the importance of nanoparticles to industrial heterogeneous catalysis.
Kim Dam-Johansen, Head of Department, DTU Chemical Engineering read out the justification, stating:
“Bjerne Steffen Clausen is a remarkable engineer who in exemplary fashion has combined fundamental research with technological and commercial development at the highest level imaginable. Having completed his PhD at DTU and following a productive period at the best chemical engineering departments in the United States, Bjerne began his professional career as a researcher at Haldor Topsøe A/S. As a researcher, he has generated fundamental scientific and technical knowledge that has been published in leading journals, and he has received recognition from colleagues in the form of numerous citations—with an impressive Hirsch index score of 56.”
Three doctorates
Over the past year, three brilliant researchers achieved recognition for having helped science make considerable strides forward, and have therefore been promoted to Doctor Technices:
• Associate Professor Bo Friis Nielsen, DTU Compute, for his thesis entitled ‘Matrix Analytic Methods in Applied Probability with a view towards Engineering Applications’.
• Senior Researcher Mathias Stolpe, DTU Wind Energy, for his thesis entitled ‘Models and Methods for Structural Topology Optimization with Discrete Design Variables’.
• PhD Thomas Ruhland for his thesis entitled ‘New Tools for High-Throughput Organic Synthesis’.
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The DTU Gold Medal
– Lars Pallesen, former President of DTU.
The DTU Gold Medal is presented as an honorary award to people who have made a particularly notable effort for DTU and the work of the University. This year’s recipient is Lars Pallesen, President of DTU in the period 2001–2011. It was a period that also served as a launch pad for DTU’s development into the University as we know it today.
When he took over the position of President in 2001, Lars Pallesen’s task was relatively clear and simple. ‘All’ he had to do was deal with all the dead wood and make the most of the magnificent research environments and the potential that clearly existed. He was tasked with increasing student enrolments, establishing a robust and financially well-founded university, and renovating the campus. Finally, he was to expand and develop the University within the framework laid down by the new DTU Act. Lars Pallesen succeeded in all these aims to a rare degree.
The Alexander Foss Gold Medal
- Professor Marcel Somers, DTU Mechanical Engineering.
This year, DTU has decided to award the Alexander Foss Gold Medal for deserving work in the field of engineering science to Professor Marcel Somers of DTU Mechanical Engineering.
A Netherlands native, Marcel Somers received both both his MSc and his Doctorate in metallurgy from Delft University of Technology. He moved to Denmark in 1997 and took up the position of professor of physical metallurgy at DTU. He has made a significant contribution to establishing an active research environment in materials science at DTU, distinguished by numerous PhD students, a great many scientific publications, and innovation work that has resulted in several patent applications. The work is clearly inspired by industrial usages.
Professor Marcel Somers is particularly interested in gas-metal interaction on material surfaces, which is used to improve and optimize resistance to corrosion, wear and fatigue. He is rich in initiative and eagerly exploits opportunities to partner other research areas. He has received a variety of awards for his research and innovation work.
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The DTU Innovation Prize
- Associate Professor Thomas J. Howard, DTU Mechanical Engineering
Thomas Howard is passionate about innovation! Within his area of research—robust design—he runs a number of projects in partnership with industry. He is at the cutting edge when it comes to integrating entrepreneurship into the education system, and he also finds time and energy to shepherd his students’ start-up attempts through their incubation stages . For example, he has been involved in no fewer than seven finalist projects and two winners of the Venture Cup, as well as five start-ups that have gone on to attract external financing.
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The DTU Prize for student start-ups
- Airtame v. Airtame—Marius Klausen and Attila Sukosd
Airtame was established in 2013 to sell a wireless HDMI solution, and the company already employs 12 people. The founder members of Airtame come from DTU, Copenhagen Business School (CBS) and Aarhus University (AU), and they have developed their software and prototype in DTU’s APP garage and Skylab, respectively. Airtame has raised more than USD 1.2 million in crowdfunding on Indigogo—the largest sum ever generated in this way by a Danish company.
Based in Copenhagen, Airtime describes its vision as follows: “We want to be in a position to display content from any computer on any screen—wirelessly”, and it seems that the company is succeeding in this aim.
The Airtame product is an HDMI dongle that you can attach to a TV, a projector or a screen, start up via USB and then use to stream wirelessly to your computer screen. There is no need to connect anything to your computer because Airtame uses WiFi technology, which is bundled as standard.
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The DTU Internationalization Award
- Assistant Professor Ying Yan from DTU Fotonik.
Assistant Professor Ying is a very active, innovative and appreciated member of DTU’s International Employee Network (IEN), where she is involved in creating, organizing and promoting social activities at DTU with the objective of boosting intercultural understanding and partnership. This includes setting up and holding a highly successful event entitled Mit land (My Country).
In 2013, Assistant Professor Ying also launched a voluntary beginners’ course in Chinese for DTU staff. The course is scheduled be run again in 2014 with an even larger group, when Assistant Professor Ying will be supported by two Chinese DTU colleagues.
The DTU Safety Award
- Laboratory Coordinator Ebba Schnell, DTU Civil Engineering .
Every year, the DTU Corporate Work Environment Committee presents the DTU Safety Award. This year, the award was presented to Laboratory Coordinator Ebba Schnell from DTU Civil Engineering.
Ebba Schnell receives the award for filling the role and shouldering the responsibility of local work environment coordinator in exemplary fashion, with unfailing strength, conviction and good humour. With her consistently positive, constructive and indefatigable work, Ebba is a role model for the entire work environment organization at DTU. Work environment issues are dealt with promptly in the service of preventative initiatives.
Gala lecture
- Thomas L. Andresen, DTU Nanotech .
The title of this year’s gala lecture was 'The Chemical Robot—New materials in the battle against illness and the art of programming in chemical codes'.
The lecture centred around how we can develop improved chemotherapy—that only affects cancer cells and not healthy tissue, for example—by inserting tiny robots into the body, or by injecting round two million billion nanospheres, each carrying medicine for delivery directly into the sick cancer tissue.
The illustration shows a particle measuring 100 nm, which is an effective cancer treatment agent. Inside the particle are pharmaceutical molecules packed in a soap-like fat substance that is actually a programmed material which releases the pharmaceutical modules when the particle makes contact with a tumour. Polymer ‘hairs’ on the surface of the particle shield it from the body’s immune defence cells, and the red antibodies are coding molecules to ensure the particle binds to cancer cells. (DTU Nanotech)
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