Dear colleague, welcome to the Pandemic Breakfast on April 24th with exciting presentations of the book “Navigating Pandemic Phases”.

Read more about the event here and remember to register. The event is hybrid, so you can participate digitally or physically.

Pandemic Breakfast Registration: Pandemic Breakfast on April 24th, 2025

We hope to see you!

Help us get more thesis proposals and sWe are experiencing a growing challenge among medical students who are struggling to find topics and supervisors for their thesis. Christine, who manages the thesis projects in medicine, is now encouraging academic communities to contribute suggestions.

– More and more students are struggling to find a topic for their thesis and, not least, to find a supervisor for their work. We need your help there, says Christine

Submit a proposal for a thesis in medical school

Currently, there are only 18 available topics, which is too few to meet the need. Academic communities are asked to submit thesis and topic proposals as well as supervisors. It is important to note whether the topic should be reserved for students in Stavanger or Bergen.

– We greatly appreciate your help. Currently, we only have the topics you see on this list (requires login), and that is the minimum, adds Christine.

This info day on 22 May aims to inform applicants about the topics included in the Cluster 1 ‘Health’ work programme of 2025.

Under the pillar 2 of Horizon Europe, Cluster 1 focuses on Health and aims to deliver on the following six destinations matching the Strategic Plan:

• Staying healthy in a rapidly changing society
• Living and working in a health-promoting environment
• Tackling diseases and reducing disease burden
• Ensuring access to innovative, sustainable and high-quality health care
• Unlocking the full potential of new tools, technologies and digital solutions for a healthy society
• Maintaining an innovative, sustainable and globally competitive health-related industry

https://research-innovation-community.ec.europa.eu/events/3F0n7H46ft6PlJqQPaRmIt/overview

UiB Career days for early-stage researchers from 8.-10. April 2025! UiB Ferd offer career development activities, seminars and talks related to various aspects of reflecting and preparing for the next career step.

Find updated programme here https://www.uib.no/en/ferd/170564/career-days-2025

The 31st NOFE conference will be held in Bergen on the 29th–30th of October 2025 at Radisson Blu Royal Hotel in Bergen, hosted by the Norwegian Epidemiological Association/ Norsk forening for epidemiologi (NOFE).

We are thrilled to announce that the theme will be “Transforming epidemiology with AI”. 

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are increasingly applied in epidemiological studies. AI offers opportunities to advance our understanding of complex patterns and causal inference but is also associated with some key challenges. How can AI and machine learning techniques be leveraged for better public health?

We have invited three eminent keynote speakers, who are all prominent researchers within AI research.

Join us at the NOFE conference for an inspiring conference to learn more, to present your research and to meet new and old colleagues. We welcome all abstracts with topics within epidemiology.

Register for the conference here!

Important dates:

6th of June: Deadline for abstract submission

23rd of August: Deadline for early bird

The Young Investigator Day will be organized as a pre-conference workshop one day before the conference the 28th of October 2025.

New call – Accelerating methods into practice

Many promising methods in cancer treatment, diagnostics, and healthcare never progress beyond testing due to implementation challenges.

We are seeking projects ready to take the next step – advancing a promising method toward real-world use.

The application deadline is Wednesday 14th of May at 13.00. We look forward to receiving your application!

Q&A for “Accelerating methods into practice” 8th of April, 9.30

New call – Advancing prevention research

At least 1 in 3 cancer cases can be prevented – and cancer shares many of the same risk factors as other non-communicable diseases.

In collaboration with LHL and the Norwegian Health Association, we want to identify the most effective prevention strategies and understand how to scale and implement them at a population level.

We are looking for innovative, interdisciplinary projects that can make a real difference in public health!

The application deadline is Thursday 5th of June at 13.00. We look forward to receiving your application!

Prevention research 2025 – Webinar for applicants – April 8th 9:30-11

A communication channel for MED-faculty young/postdoctoral researchers (Microsoft teams group – MED postdocs) with one departmental representative is now established.

MED – Extended Research Management (Postdoctoral Representative)

• Shamundeeswari Anandan (Shamundeeswari.Anandan@uib.no ; samanandhan@gmail.com)

Departmental Representatives:

• Shuntaro Yamada (shuntaro.yamada@uib.no) – MED IKO,
• Krishna Aryal (krishna.aryal@uib.no) – MED IGS,
• Vladan Milosevic (v.milosevic@uib.no) – MED K1,
• Thomas Michael James Stevenson (thomas.stevenson@uib.no) – MED IBM,
• Ester Anne Kringeland (ester.kringeland@uib.no) – MED K2

It is encouraged that all postdoctoral/early-stage researchers from the respective departments to take this opportunity to contact their contact points to connect on the teams group.

Faculty day

April 30,

08:45-12:00

Auditorium, AHH

26 May 10:00–11:30

Do you have a groundbreaking research idea, but need the expertise of one or more outstanding researchers to potentially solve the scientific challenge? ERC Synergy Grants might be the solution. Join our webinar!

ERC Synergy Grants (SyG) allow two to four outstanding “principal investigators” (PIs) to collaborate on a project for up to six years. Norwegian top researchers show great interest in this grant scheme and have been increasingly successful. The Research Council of Norway will encourage broader participation by hosting a webinar on May 26th.

https://www.forskningsradet.no/en/events/2025/webinar-erc-synergy-grant-2026/

April 28, 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM

The applicant webinar is suitable for anyone interested in research and innovation for sustainable municipal health and care services.

There will be an orientation about the call for “Research and Innovation to Strengthen Sustainability in Municipal Health and Care Services,” which has an application deadline of September 24, 2025.

Link to the event

All employees at UiB must register holiday in the UiB portal: Selvbetjeningsportalen | Ansattsider | UiB Press the button ‘Requests for absence’ and ‘Create request’.

Inform your nearest leader about your main holidays and register before May 1, write that the holiday is approved by your leader.

On 24 April 2025 from 15:00 CET to 15:45 CET, the Innovative Health Initiative is organising an online event ‘In conversation with… ITCC-P4’ that will focus on the tools that the project developed to help accelerate childhood cancer research.

IHI’s senior scientific project manager, Nathalie Seigneuret, will moderate the discussion between:

• Gilles Vassal, chief operating officer of ITCC-P4 and paediatric oncologist at Gustave Roussy Comprehensive Cancer Center
• Lou Stancato, VP of enabling technologies and leader of paediatric rare diseases at Indiana Biosciences Research Institute and adjunct clinical assistant professor of pediatrics at the Indiana University School of Medicine
• Nicole Scobie, patient representative, chair of Accelerate, board member of the Coalition Against Childhood Cancer (CAC2), and president emeritus at Zoé4Life

Register here: https://europa.eu/!MNBRkD

About the ITCC-P4 project

Cancer is still the leading cause of death by disease seen in children in Europe. Yet childhood cancers are relatively rare and are different in nature to most cancers found in adults, presenting particular challenges to cancer researchers.

The ITCC-P4 project has delivered a system composed of tools that can help researchers from both the public and private sector to identify promising molecules that could form the basis of new drugs to treat childhood cancer. This will help researchers to prioritise which drug candidates to test in children and accelerate the time it takes for those medicines to reach the clinic.

The toolkit includes validated models, a unique database outlining comprehensive molecular data about childhood cancers, an international consensus on the preclinical data needed to support paediatric drug development, and a new methodology to define the relevance of certain drug targets based on literature analysis. One of the key results was the development of  PDX models of many childhood cancers, from the more common forms of cancer to relapses and rare cancers.  PDX models are made from a combination of patient-derived tumour tissue and mouse models, and they have proven to be an effective way of studying cancer in adults but are not yet widely used in childhood cancer research.

ITCC-P4 has set up a new non-profit organisation which will continue to provide these vital tools and expertise to cancer researchers going forwards.

Find out more and register here: https://europa.eu/!MNBRkD

Visit the ITCC-P4 website:  https://itccp4.com/

Want to stay up-to-date on all of IHI’s activities?

The Novo Nordisk Prize recognizes an active scientist who has provided outstanding international contributions to advance medical science for the benefit of people’s lives. The Prize is intended to award and further support biomedical research in Europe. The Prize is of appr. EUR 672,000.

The nomination call is open until early August for the forthcoming year. The Foundation welcomes nominations by individual researchers and by research institutions

Nominees must demonstrate scientific excellence that has led to a major discovery or breakthrough in understanding of human health and disease, prevention, diagnosis and/or treatment of the disease.

https://novonordiskfonden.dk/en/grant/novo-nordisk-prize-2025/