Good to see you!

Photographer Anders Trærup was ready and waiting when some of the new international students arrived at AU’s International Centre in Aarhus to register for their degree programmes. We’d like to extend a warm welcome to you all – including those of you who are returning from holiday. (mga)

An 85-year-old spring chicken

Compared with universities like Harvard and Oxford, which were established several hundred years ago, AU is nothing but a spring chicken. Even so, it is worth celebrating the fact that it is now 85 years since AU was founded. The anniversary will be marked at the annual celebration for AU staff on 13 September; while the students can drink to the health of AU at Denmark’s Largest Friday Bar and Sports Day in the University Park in Aarhus on the same day. The Student Council and Aarhus University Sports Club are organising live music supplied by Flødeklinikken, Go Go Berling, Reptile Youth and a range of upcoming bands as well as a DJ tent.

More information on the annual celebration

For more information on Denmark’s Largest Friday Bar and Sports Day, please go to: www.storfredag.dk

Looting the archives – but only for the sake of research

The State and University Library offers all the students and researchers at Aarhus University access to a huge collection of radio and television programmes dating back to 2005 – as well as no fewer than 50,000 advertising films that have been shown in cinemas right back to 1955, and on TV2 television in Denmark since 1988. The new tool is called Mediestream, and it will be updated on an ongoing basis. The long-term plan is to add radio and television programmes from before 2005, as well as 32 million newspaper pages. The State and University Library underlines that the collection is only available for the purposes of research and teaching. (mga)

For more information, please go to statsbiblioteket.dk/mediestream.

Welcome to Aarhus University

With 11,000 members of staff and 40,000 students based at a variety of locations all over Denmark, Aarhus University can be a bit overwhelming at first. To help solve this problem, new staff can order a welcome pack from the AU webshop from September onwards. The pack is free of charge, and includes the AU staff policy, the profile brochure, a map of AU, a description of staff perks, information about IT security, IT systems and parking, and a list of all the abbreviations that are used at the university. Another new initiative involves introductory meetings in Danish and English at which the rector will welcome new members of staff, who will also be given an introduction to the AU organisation. These meetings will be held on 9 October and 1 December. (mga)

So how did things work out?

In the last issue of Omnibus you could read about Niels Okkels, a student of medicine who is one of the first people in Denmark to try financing a research project by crowd funding. He had a total of 90 days to raise USD 65,460. He managed to raise USD 2,951 dollars, and tells Omnibus:

“Next time I think there’s one major thing I’d do differently. Instead of having a single large crowd funding campaign, I’ll split it up into smaller parts or maybe try to raise some of the money via crowd funding and the rest via ordinary research grants.”

Niels Okkels and the rest of the research group are now waiting for standard research grants, and have just been informed that they’ve been given one grant at least. (mga)

1,200...

The number of students who decided to spend part of their summer holiday in one of the AU lecture theatres during this year’s Summer University. AU offered 70 different courses during the summer. (mga)

New dean at ST

There were eight applicants for the position of new Dean of Science and Technology; and the successful candidate was Professor Niels Christian Nielsen, Director of the iNANO Centre. Niels Christian Nielsen took up the reins as new dean on 6 August, replacing the new Rector of AU, Brian Bech Nielsen. (mga)

The taste of AU’s food research

Once again this year, researchers from Aarhus University’s Department of Food Science will be taking part in the largest food festival in Scandinavia. This year the Food Festival, as it is known, will be held at Tangkrogen in Aarhus on 6-8 September. The festival is divided into various areas such as the Plant Kingdom, the Dairy World, the Meat, the Ocean and the Cornfield. You can meet the AU researchers at stands all around the festival area. They will be telling visitors about a variety of subjects ranging from meat quality to muscle cells and how to make cheese. One-day tickets cost DKK 75 and three-day tickets cost DKK 150 if you buy them via foodfestival.dk. (mga)

New book about murder – and Vienna

Three researchers from Aarhus University have edited a new, easily accessible and cross-disciplinary textbook about murder. The book doesn’t tell you how to commit the perfect murder, preferring to focus instead on how murder is dealt with in forensic medicine, culture and the social sciences. It is designed for use in teaching at upper-secondary schools, and is the second volume in a series entitled “Viden om” to be published by Aarhus University Press. Another book is also in the pipeline at the University Press in the popular “Vide verden” series, which consists of travel books. This new book is about Vienna, and contains information about the city provided by a variety of researchers and personalities from the world of culture. You can taste a wienerschnitzel or apple strudel in the company of Kristian Ditlev Jensen, or listen to classical music with Georg Metz. (mga)

AU researcher wins the mini Nobel Prize

The Anders Jahre award for young medical researchers, presented by the University of Oslo, is one of the most prestigious awards for medical research in Scandinavia, which is why it’s sometimes called the mini Nobel Prize. This year the winner is Christian Brix Folsted Andersen, PhD, who is an associate professor of Biomedicine at Aarhus University. The award is in recognition of his research into the structure of macro-molecular complexes. This is the third time in four years that the Anders Jahre award has been won by an AU researcher. (mga)

Ready, steady, run!

The first members of AU staff to strap on their trainers for the five-kilometre fun run (or walk) in this year’s DHL relay race were staff on the island of Funen. Staff in Aarhus were next, and on Thursday 29 August it will be AU staff on the island of Zealand. A total of 2,240 AU staff are taking part in the traditional relay race this year. (mga)

New travel card for students

As of 1 August, the Danish State Railways (DSB) are replacing their HyperCard and Student Card tickets with the new “Ungdomskort” (a travel card for young people). The new card costs DKK 19.57 per day for all students of further education who are entitled to receive a grant, giving you free transport between your college or university and your home as well as anywhere in the zones covered. You can also get up to 50 per cent discount on all trips between zones. So the new card could be a real advantage for students travelling by train on a daily basis. If you use the trains less frequently than this, the DSB WildCard still gives students the chance to save up to 50 per cent on train tickets. (mga)