DTU’s Commemoration Day
President at Commemoration Day: “The future needs more. More knowledge, not less.”
At the 2024 Commemoration Day, DTU celebrated the past year’s research results, extraordinary teaching, and student start-ups with award presentations, a commemorative lecture, and singing. HM The King and Minister for Higher Education and Science Christina Egelund attended the event.
President Anders Bjarklev opened the academic part of the celebration by highlighting how DTU’s focus on offering Europe’s best engineering programmes and conducting world-class research is widely recognized.
“A year has passed, and DTU performed extremely well in 2023: We were voted the best technical university in Europe. The best! So dear DTU students and staff. Dear partners: You produce impressive results.”
Anders Bjarklev also made it clear that DTU is aiming even higher when it comes to innovation in 2024.
“Last year, our students and staff launched 81 start-ups. 81! But our goal for next year is 100 start-ups! The future needs more. More knowledge, not less. More hands, not less.”
In his speech, Anders Bjarklev drew the government’s attention to the fact that Denmark—according to a large, recent study—will need several thousand new engineers within a few years, and urged the government to give DTU the opportunity to produce more engineers, not less.
“Yes, Denmark has a problem. But the solution is not fewer university students. Dimensioning. Let’s be honest, and call it what it is: Reduction. The reduction of student places is a huge challenge. For our country. For society. For the business community. For industry. For everyone who benefits from universities’ knowledge, advice, and innovation. A recent survey shows that we will need an additional 17-21,000 people with a higher education—engineers—by 2030! In Eastern Denmark alone. Here! I’ve said it many times before—and I’ll say it again: There should be no reduction in student places at DTU!”
Two Lecturers of the Year awards
Every year, the DTU students vote for their lecturers of the year. This year, the honour went to Inge Li Gørtz, Professor at DTU Compute, and Jens Honore Walther, Professor at DTU Construct. As Lecturers of the Year, they each receive a diploma, DKK 25,000, and a small gift from PF handed over by President of PF Mikkel Berrig Rasmussen.
Professor Inge Li Gørtz teaches algorithms and data structures and is the key person behind DTU’s IT camp for girls from all Danish high schools.
Professor Jens Honore Walther’s teaching includes Computational Fluid Dynamics, which is a way of creating computer simulations of fluid dynamics that can be used to intelligently predict how liquids and gasses will work.
Occupational Health and Safety Award of the Year
This year's Occupational Health and Safety Award was given to Lone Rosenkær Olsen, Work Health Safety Coordinator, DTU Aqua, and was presented by President Anders Bjarklev.
The Occupational Health and Safety Award is given to an employee who has made a special effort for a safe and secure working environment.
Lone Rosenkær Olsen is work health safety coordinator at DTU Aqua, which has employees at several DTU locations in Denmark and Greenland, and whose tasks are of great diversity. She receives the award for her focus on creating a safe workplace at DTU Aqua, no matter where and what you work with. The award comes with a prize of DKK 25,000.
Innovation Award
The Innovation Award is given to a researcher who has initiated and maintained the development that has made DTU a fantastic innovation ecosystem.
Professor Anja Boisen, DTU Health Technology, received the Innovation Award for her more than 20 years of experience in sensor development. Anja Boisen sees synergy between innovation and research and is co-founder of four spin-out companies from DTU.
The award comes with a prize of DKK 25,000.The award was presented by Marianne Thellersen, Director for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Senior Vice President.
Student Start-up of the Year
The 2024 Student Start-up of the Year went to Anton Birn, Laurine Dargaud, Abhista Partal, and Petros Maravelakis for their DemensAI start-up.
Using advanced AI tools that can analyse acoustic and linguistic nuances in patients’ speech, the team behind DemensAI can currently detect signs of Alzheimer’s disease with an accuracy of 93 per cent.
The award came with DKK 25,000 for further development of the product. The award was presented by Marianne Thellersen, Director for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Senior Vice President.
Doctorates
The Danish Academic Council has awarded Senior Researcher Eugen Stamate, DTU Nanolab, the Technical Doctorate (Dr.Techn.). At the 2024 Commemoration Day, he was celebrated for his research in plasma physics, where he has discovered a 3D plasma sheath lens, which is crucial for developing new micro and nanofabrication technologies.
The technical doctorate is the highest academic title an engineer can achieve.
The Alexander Foss Gold Medal
The Alexander Foss Gold Medal is awarded to researchers for meritorious work in engineering.
Professor Torsten Dau, DTU Health Technology, received the gold medal for his research in hearing technology. He has made a significant contribution in the field of hearing research, and throughout his career he has established several centres and pioneered close collaborations between hospitals and industry.
Commemorative lecture
This year’s commemorative lecturer was Tejs Vegge, Professor at DTU Energy. Tejs Vegge’s research is about finding new sustainable materials that can be used as catalysts energy conversion and storage—e.g. for the Power-to-X technology, which aims to convert electricity into something else, such as hydrogen.
In his commemorative lecture, Tejs Vegge focused on the need for finding new and faster ways to discover the sustainable materials that are key to the green transition, and that this is exactly what DTU’s new interdisciplinary research centre CAPeX is dedicated to for the next 13 years.
Honorary doctorates
This year, three honorary doctorates were awarded. The honorary doctorate is awarded to a researcher from another university with longstanding close relations with DTU. The researcher has helped elevate DTU to the international stage through exchange, research, and collaboration.
One honorary doctorate was awarded to Professor David J. Moss, who researches nanophotonics at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia. Nanophotonics is about light on a very small scale, typically on the order of nanometers, which is used for information technology, solar cell technologies, and biomedicine. The award of the honorary doctorate to David J. Moss was motivated by Leif Katsuo Oxenløwe, Professor at DTU Electro.
One honorary doctorate was awarded to Morten Meldal, Professor at the University of Copenhagen, who researches combinatorial chemistry. In 2022, he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of click chemistry. Click chemistry is used, among other things, to synthesize new materials with specific properties, develop pharmaceuticals, and produce biocompatible materials. The appointment of Morten Meldal was motivated by Erling Stenby, Head of Department and Professor at DTU Chemistry.
One honorary doctorate was awarded to Jan Hesthaven, Provost and Professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland. Jan Hesthaven’s research includes developing computer methods to solve complex physical problems. By solving these problems, the goal is to improve engineering design and decision-making in various technological fields. The appointment of Jan Hesthaven was motivated by Allan Peter Engsig-Karup, Associate Professor at DTU Compute.
DTU Gold Medal
The DTU Gold Medal was awarded to Sten Scheibye, who was DTU’s Chairman of the Board from 2009-2012 and has been crucial to DTU’s development and status today as an international technical elite university.
Sten Scheibye plays a key role in the Danish business community and has held several senior positions in the pharmaceutical industry.
He was one of the driving forces behind the merger of Ballerup School of Engineering and DTU in Lyngby and the establishment of the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability, also called DTU Biosustain.
Speech by President of Polyteknisk Forening
The President of PF, Mikkel Berrig Rasmussen, began his speech by comparing the conditions for DTU’s students in 2024 with those that existed in 1974:
“Well-being is at the centre. That’s been the narrative for the past several years. Year after year, students show up at the Commemoration Day and speak about how crazy it is that we push students through a system without seeing the consequences of the reforms. I was actually also writing yet another one of these speeches myself. Talking about what we can and want, if only we had the time and energy. However, we can see that we have failed to get through to the key decision-maker. The ministry. If well-being were the key focus area of the ministry, the 6th year of the State Educational Grant would not have been cut off.”
He encouraged DTU’s students to make the outside world aware of their value to society.
“I think the time has come for those of us who spend our everyday lives here at universities to insist on our worth. And that we take home the narrative of what our institutions should be able to do and what gives them value. The current resourcefulness of the sector in the State’s spreadsheet leaves the consequences to the individual student—and in my opinion that is unfair. Let’s instead rediscover and recreate our common narrative, and ensure that our universities in Denmark are something we can all be proud of.”
Finally, he concluded with the hope that the same commitment that exists at DTU today will also exist far into the future.
“In 50 years, in 2074, I hope that when we meet on all of our campuses, that there’s still that vibe of curiosity, commitment, and joy of being a student here. After all, our fellow students embody exactly that! Our study programme, our environments! Everything we want to achieve during our time at university.”
Party for 4,000 guests
The academic ceremony was followed by individual receptions for the President’s Office, the Executive Board, and other guests. The King attended the President’s reception, where he wrote in DTU’s guestbook and congratulated this year’s award winners. The reception was followed by a dinner with approximately 3,000 participants. The evening concluded with a large party for approx. 4,000 participants and concerts with Saveus and Gobs.
