Norwegian Honorary Prize and Funding for UCPH Researchers
Norwegian Honorary Prize and Funding for UCPH Researchers
This year, Professor Vilhelm A. Bohr from the University of Copenhagen and the National Institute on Aging in the United States will receive the international research prize from the Norwegian Olav Thon Foundation for his outstanding career. At the same time, Professor Steven Goldman will receive funding for his brain research.
It is the sixth consecutive year that the Norwegian Olav Thon Foundation awards an international research prize as well as funding for innovative research projects. On Thursday, Professor in Ageing, Vilhelm A. Bohr, from the Center for Healthy Aging and the National Institute on Aging will receive the research prize for an impressive research career, while Professor Steven Goldman from the Center for Translational Neuromedicine will receive research funding.
The prizes will be presented to the two researchers and other recipients on Thursday at a ceremony at the University of Oslo with speeches by Rector Svein Stølen and Olav Thon, who will present the prizes in person.
‘Bohr's most important contribution has been in the field of DNA repair. He has worked on many aspects of DNA damage, the processing of such damage in mammalian cells and has developed a widely used method for analysing DNA repair in individual genes. Vilhelm A. Bohr found that it is the active genes that are mainly repaired. This observation was a major step forward in clarifying the close interplay between DNA repair and transcription’, writes the Olav Thon Foundation in their motivation for presenting Vilhelm A. Bohr with the prize.
White Matter in the Brain
Professor Steven Goldman is receiving funding for a research project that shall demonstrate how to regenerate white matter in the adult human brain. The research project is led by researchers at the University of Copenhagen, but will be performed in collaboration with researchers from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.
The researchers must, among other things, analyse the so-called glial cells in the brain. They will study single cells at specific age and developmental stages under specific environmental conditions.
The international research prize amounts to five million Norwegian kroner, while the research funding for the brain research project is ten million kroner.
Read more about the prizes and the other recipients on the Olav Thon Foundation's website.