HENRIK HAGER, chief physician at Vejle Sygehus: 

Consultant pathologist and associate clinical professor at Vejle Hospital. Has long experience in morphological aspects of molecular biology in cancer research. He started his postgraduate research and did a phD. thesis at Danish Cancer Society and Institute of Medical biochemistry at Aarhus University 1996 – 1999 focusing on expression of the crosslinking enzyme tissue transglutaminase during cancer cell invasion. After this he changed research and made at postdoc at Dept. of Cell Biology 1999 – 2001. The focus was on Na- and water channels in the human kidney. From 2001 to 2006 he trained as pathologist. From 2007 he was employed as consultant pathologist and associate clinical professor at dept. of pathology Aarhus Hospital and later Vejle Hospital. In this period, he collaborated mainly with Lasse Sommer Kristensen in various project concerning cancer epigenomics. This collaboration is ongoing focusing on gene expression, non-coding RNAs, circular RNAs and the cell / stroma interaction in cancer

JUAN LOUIS GARCIA RODRIGUEZ, Postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Biomedicine: 

Juan is a postdoctoral fellow at Aarhus University. His main research focus relies on cancer progression, from its earliest manifestation to its latest stages. The understanding of the most biologically relevant succession of events has already uncovered unprecedented avenues to combat this deadly disease. For more than a decade, he has been studying these dysplastic phenomena in different cancerous contexts, including the liver and blood.

LASSE SOMMER KRISTENSEN, PhD, Associate Professor at the Department of Biomedicine:

Associate Professor at the Department of Biomedicine with a background in molecular biology and cancer research. Started his research career at the PeterMacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, Australia in 2007-2008 focusing on cancer epigenetics. Then did a PhD at the Department of Biomedicine, Aarhus University from 2009-2012 before moving to Copenhagen University and Rigshospitalet to do a postdoc from 2012-2016 focusing on translational epigenetics research in hematological malignancies. He then did another change of research environment and started focusing on gene expression, non-coding RNAs and circular RNAs in cancer as well as in normal stem cell differentiations working at the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Aarhus University from 2016-2019. Finally, thanks to a large grant from the Lundbeck Foundation, Lasse moved back to the Department of Biomedicine in 2020 to start his own independent research group.

MOGENS KRUHØFFER, PhD, Founder and CEO of BioXpedia A/S:

Dr. Kruhøffer has over 20 years of research experience resulting in over 85 publications in international peer-reviewed scientific journals and 20 years of experience in contract research services. He graduated from University of Aarhus with an MSc in Biology and completed his PhD work at the Max-Planck-Institute for Experimental Medicine in Gottingen, Germany. He returned to Denmark as an associate Professor at the Molecular Medicine Department at Aarhus University Hospital where his research focused on bladder and colorectal cancer using advanced Functional Genomic methods.In 2000 Dr. Kruhøffer co-founded the Biotech Service Company “AROS Applied Biotechnology” where he held the position of chief scientific officer (CSO). He was directly responsible for of the delivery of more than 500 projects as project leader during this period. In 2016, he founded BioXpedia, a company focused on genomic and proteomic biomarker discovery and validation.

MORTEN T. J. OLESEN, PhD, postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Biomedicine

Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Biomedicine, Aarhus University, with a background in drug delivery and preclinical research focusing on difficult-to-treat diseases, such as cancers and inflammatory diseases. Morten kicked of his research career in 2012 at the department of Molecular Biology and Genetics and iNANO, Aarhus University, where he obtained a BSc in 2012 and an MSc in 2015. During this time, his research mainly focused on mucosal drug delivery and therapeutic intervention of inflammatory bowel disease and mucosal tumors. Later he moved to the Department of Chemistry, iNANO, Aarhus University, where he obtained a PhD in Nanoscience in 2018 and subsequently conducted postdoctoral studies, within cancer-related drug delivery and local anticancer intervention. In 2020, Morten changed research environment again and moved to the Department of Biomedicine, Aarhus University, to focus on biomarker discovery within cancers and cancer biology research.

MORTEN T. VENØ, PhD in bioinformatics, founder of Omiics and CEO since 2018: 

Morten Venø holds a PhD in Molecular Biology from Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark (2012). During his PhD he spent collectively one year at Rockefellers University, New York, USA as a laboratory scientist (2012). From 2012 to 2016 he worked as a Post-Doctoral Fellow with NGS bioinformatics at Aarhus University, followed by two years as senior bioinformatician and project coordinator on the EU consortia FP7 EpiMiRNA (2013-2018): Collaborative EU project investigating miRNA dysregulation in epilepsy. Also, Morten was involved as a collaborator in the EU consortia JPND (Joint Program in Neurodegeneration Research), a cross-Disease Analysis Consortium RNA-NEURO (2017-2020). RNANEURO aims to provide the fingerprint of small non-coding RNA in ALS, PD and FTD in both animal models and patient samples (serum/plasma) through RNA sequencing and modification analysis. Finally, he has had an active role in the circRTrain consortia, a Marie Curie Innovative Training Network (ITN) funded by the European Union within the H2020 Programme.Morten Venø has more than 10 years of experience in working with NGS and bioinformatics. His research activity has resulted in co-authorship of 29 publications in Journals including Science, EMBO Journal, PNAS, Nature Communications and Genome Biology.

RUDY VAN EIJSDEN, PhD, Senior Manager, Product Application Scientist at NanoString Technologies:

Rudy van Eijsden studied Biological Health Sciences at Maastricht University in The Netherlands. He did his Ph.D. at the Department of Clinical Genetics at Maastricht University where he studied oxidative phosphorylation disorders using the microarray technology. During that period, he got acquainted with bioinformatics for microarray data analysis. From end-2006 until mid-2014 he worked at the VIB MicroArray Facility (now named VIB Nucleomics Core) in Leuven in Belgium, first as a post-doctoral scientist being part of the bioinformatics team, later as a staff-scientist being responsible for the project management and consultancy of all microarray, Nanostring nCounter, and NGS RNA-sequencing experiments. Having the first Nanostring nCounter system in Europe (end-2008) at VIB, Rudy has built up substantial experience with the NanoString nCounter technology and its applications and became a big fan. This contributed to his move to Nanostring Technologies, where he started in August 2014 as a Field Application Scientist being responsible together with his colleagues for customer support and support of the sales team in the EMEA region. In January 2019 Rudy transitioned to the role of Senior Product Application Scientist where he focused on the GeoMx Digital Spatial Profiling technology providing support to the GeoMx DSP customer base and the sales team. In January 2021 Rudy took on the role as Senior Manager leading the global team of Product Application Scientist.

THOMAS MAILUND, PhD, Associate Professor at the Bioinformatics Research Center:

Professor Thomas Mailund from BIRC at Aarhus University has a strong background in mathematics, bioinformatics and genomic evolutionary analysis.

ULTAN McDERMOTT, Chief Scientist at Astra Zeneca:

Ultan McDermott is a clinician scientist and has a lifelong interest in understanding how cancer genomes affect response in the clinic to therapy, and more recently the use of genetic screens to identify mechanisms of drug resistance in cancer.Ultan joined the Wellcome Sanger Institute in 2009 as a Group Leader and member of faculty. Previously he worked as a postdoctoral fellow with Jeff Settleman at Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center on high-throughput cancer cell line drug screens and resistance mechanisms. In 2018 he took up a role in AstraZeneca as Chief Scientist in Oncology.He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and continues to practice as an oncologist at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge.

Read more about the first five projects funded in ODIN.