Making the cut
– The role as a coordinator in a Horizon 2020 project is associated with high research quality, prestige and leadership, together with personal and institutional visibility, says senior executive officer Magnus Seierstad.
He is working at the External Funding Unit at the Departement of Medicine, UiO, a group of advisors that assists the faculty’s researchers with application writing to the EU, ERC and The Research Council of Norway.
Acknowledgement from cooperating partners and EU
– As a coordinator, you have started and defined a new project, and are leading the process of choosing partners. It is also the coordinator who writes the application and thus receives the grant. This means that by standing behind the application, all the other partners in the project acknowledge your scientific and administrative capacity, Seierstad explains.
The same recognition is also given through the European Commissions’ evaluation process. They acknowledge that you have the operational capacity, the experience that is needed and a large network. These are important factors that secure a successful implementation of the project.
As a coordinator, you will also start and lead processes related to the potential impact of the project, both at the societal level and on research and science.
Biology and mathematical models
Vessela Kristensen is leading the research on the project RESCUER. The researchers will mainly focus on identifying mechanisms of breast cancer treatment resistance at a systems level, and how the treatment is affected by conditions special for each patient.
While Vessela Kristensen is an expert on the biology of breast cancer, Arnoldo Frigessi and his group will have the responsibility for a mathematical model intended to simulate cancer treatment. The project is multidisciplinary with surgeons, pathologists and cancer researchers as well as mathematicians, bioinformaticians and molecular biologists. They will emphasize ethical questions regarding implementation of personalized medicine in Europe. Together they wish to disclose the best treatment for each patient.
The research is a cooperation between the researchers at the Faculty of Medicine at UiO, and 14 different partners. One of the partners is Oslo University Hospital. The project has gotten six million Euros from the prestigious Horizon 2020-program.
Vessela Kristensen is a researcher at the Department of Medical Genetics.
Aims to predict the risk of cardiovascular diseases in patients with mental health disorders
Mental disorders cause reduced life quality. They also makes you more vulnerable to developing cardiovascular diseases. Comorbidity, having more than one disease at the same time, can be extremely difficult for both patients and their families. This is also a huge challenge and a financial burden to the society. But how is this connected? Why do these patients have both diseases at the same time? This is what researchers in the EU project CoMorMent want to figure out. Ole Andreassen at NORMENT is the project coordinator.
– We want to find the underlying mechanisms of the high comorbidity between these types of diseases, and separate what is genetic factors, environmental factors and how these relate to lifestyle, says Andreassen.