The year's best Master's theses are written by BMI students
The Medical Society in Copenhagen has just announced the three winners of the award for best Master's theses, where two BMI students won first and third place.
Rasmus Henrik Reeh from the Department of Biomedical Sciences (BMI) has won the first prize for "The Best Medical Master's Thesis of the Year from the University of Copenhagen", which is awarded by the Medical Society of Copenhagen.
Søren Rand, also from BMI, has won third prize for his thesis "Genome-wide association study of hypothyroidism suggest close genetic correlation to autoimmune diseases and potential drug-target for thyroid disease" under the supervision of Professor Morten Salling Olesen.
The prizes are awarded once a year to three medical students at the University of Copenhagen who, through their master's theses, have shown distinct scientific abilities. In addition to the honor, there is a scholarship amount of DKK 15,000, DKK 10,000 and DKK 5,000 respectively for the first, second and third prizes.
"The best Master's thesis of the year" written by Rasmus Henrik Reeh was prepared as part of the Danish-American Research Exchange Programme, which is supported by the Lundbeck Foundation.
Rasmus has done research for a year in the laboratory of Professor Lous Ptáček at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), while Professor Thomas Mandrup-Poulsen from BMI has provided supervision across time zones. Thomas also supervised Rasmus during his Bachelor's thesis and is now his PhD supervisor.
Rasmus Henrik Reeh received a PhD scholarship from the Danish Cardiovascular Academy earlier this year, which will be used to investigate how disturbances in the circadian rhythm affect the risk of developing diabetes and associated cardiovascular disorders.
The project is an extension of the Master's thesis and includes both an epidemiological analysis of people with disturbances in the circadian rhythm and an experimental study of how high glucose levels can affect the circadian rhythm genes and lead to a worsening cardio-metabolic state.