Friday waffle with Wafflepitch at Eitri: Calum Leitch and Irini Ktoridou-Valen: "Repurposing Medicines for Blood Cancer: ValQ and the Bjørgvin Therapeutics Group."
More information can be found here: Fredagsvaffel med Vaffelpitch på Eitri: Calum Leitch and Irini Ktoridou-Valen: “Repurposing Medicines for Blood Cancer: ValQ and the Bjørgvin Therapeutics Group.” — Eitri
We are fortunate to have a publication fund at UiB that covers article processing charges for fully open access journals. Unfortunately, some individuals have exploited this to mass produce weak articles published in open access journals with poor peer review.
In Forskerforum, one can read about a PhD candidate who exploited the publication fund at the University of Agder cover 25 of the 78 articles he produced during his three years there. Eight of these were published by the sloppy Hindawi publisher and were later retracted when Wiley acquired Hindawi. Nine of the articles were published in in special issues under the MDPI publisherwhich has many low quality special issues.
Unfortunately, at K2 we have also hosted a researcher who grossly exploited this system and requested support for publishing 27 articles in MDPI and Frontiers between January and May 2025. Fortunately, the University Library has now tightened its practices for the UiB publication fund. Any serious and contentious researcher must be very careful to avoid supporting such special-issues or publishing in this manner.
Main supervisors of PhD candidates who have defended their dissertations in 2025 may qualify for reward funds from Helse Vest. The scheme applies to many researchers at UiB, but not all are automatically captured in the current system. We therefore encourage all relevant main supervisors to check the criteria and register completed doctoral degrees by the deadline.
Helse Vest considers main supervisors for reward funds if the PhD candidate meets one of the following criteria:
This could be:
It does not matter who the employer is, which university awards the degree, or where the supervisor works.
This may include:
Funding for the guidance itself is not crucial.
If one of the criteria is met, the main supervisor can register the doctoral degree here: Registrering av doktorgrader 2025 – Fyll ut skjema
The registration ensures that the main supervisor is considered for reward funds, and at the same time it ensures that Helse Vest can report the degree in national measurement systems that generate new research funds for the region.
Contact Health West at forskning@helse-vest.no if more information or clarification is needed.
In 2024, UiB launched an ERC Starting Grant Development Programme. This programme will continue in 2026, and a new round is being initiated for researchers planning to apply for the ERC Starting Grant call in autumn 2026. The programme supports ERC Starting Grant applicants through three phases: concept development, project development, and proposal writing. Two seminars are planned (March and April), as well as a writing seminar in June. K2 will send a list of interested candidates to the faculty by 18 February. Those interested are asked to contact kurt.hanevik@uib.no. kurt.hanevik@uib.no.
Wednesday, January 21, was a milestone for collaboration within surgical and internal medicine disciplines in the regional study model Vestlandslegen at UiB.
Over 60 academic representatives from Førde, Haugesund, Stavanger and Bergen gathered for the first time to discuss teaching in the clinical semesters of the medical study. The seminar involved working in groups, both for representatives within each subject area and between subjects. There were discussions of expected progression in teaching, learning content and benefits for the students.
A great deal of work had been done beforehand to compile all teaching topics in surgical and internal medicine subjects, as a basis for the discussions at the seminar. The leaders of the two subject groups, Trude Gundersen (surgical subjects/campus Bergen) and Svein Joar Johnsen (internal medicine subjects/campus Stavanger), were responsible for facilitating the group work, and report a great deal of engagement around the group tables.
Experiences from Bergen and Stavanger are important in building the clinical years of medical studies on all four campuses, and now work is accelerating towards commencement in Førde and Haugesund in autumn 2028 and autumn 2029, respectively.
Project manager for Vestlandslegen at the University of Bergen, Gottfried Greve, was very pleased to have gathered so many professional representatives from the region:
and internal medicine subjects bode well for the further work on the curriculum in the multi-campus model. Being able to meet physically at the beginning was important and I hope that cooperation on teaching will also strengthen cooperation in the clinic and research. We will all benefit from that. It is inspiring to be involved in educating our future colleagues.
Kristian Smeland Ytre-Hauge has been selected as one of four top researchers in Norway to receive funding to build a world-leading research environment in proton therapy.
Professor of Medical Physics at the University of Bergen, Kristian Smeland Ytre‑Hauge, together with national partners, will raise knowledge about proton therapy to a new level. The project BioPrecise Protons får 40 millioner kroner fra Forskningsrådet og går over åtte år.
– One of the main goals is to increase the precision of treatment so that we can avoid irradiating healthy tissue around the cancer tumor to a greater extent., says Ytre-Hauge.
Proton therapy is one of the most advanced forms of radiation therapy for cancer. The method makes it possible to confine the radiation dose to a precise, defined depth in the body, which is especially important when treating brain tumors and cancers in the head and neck region. Children will be a priority patient group at the new proton centers in Bergen and Oslo, as they are more susceptible to late damage after radiation therapy.
Although proton therapy already offers great benefits, Ytre-Hauge emphasizes that current practice does not fully utilize its potential.
– To account for limitations in precision, we currently include safety margins around the tumor. This means that a larger area than the actual cancerous tumor is irradiated,, he explains.
Increased precision can reduce these margins, thereby sparing more healthy tissue. It may also allow for higher doses to be delivered to the tumor itself – which could increase the chance of curing more patients.
The research group will use a combination of computer simulations, cell and animal experiments, and new detector technology to understand how proton radiation works both physically and biologically.
– We will improve calculations of treatment effect and develop new methods for more targeted irradiation of tumors that are currently resistant to radiation., says Ytre-Hauge.
A central element of the project is to fill knowledge gaps about how proton radiation affects cells and tissues.
– Although proton therapy provides clear physical benefits, we still lack sufficient knowledge about the biological mechanisms. The project will provide new insight into the relationship between radiation dose, biological effect and treatment response, he says.
This knowledge is crucial to exploiting the full potential of proton therapy and developing more precise and gentle cancer treatment of the future.
In connection with the reorganization of the research fellow spaces on the 8th floor of the Laboratory Building, we currently have a large number of chairs, desks and drawer units left over.
To arrange a pick-up or for more information, please contact:
The furniture looks like this:
The University of Bergen is participating in this year's conference with a wide range of academic contributions and side events.
The University of Bergen is once again present at Arctic Frontiers in Tromsø – an international meeting place that brings together researchers, business, politicians and representatives from local and indigenous populations to discuss developments in the Arctic region. This year's conference includes a foreign policy summit with the foreign ministers of Norway, the EU and Greenland, in addition to a number of scientific sessions and side events.
UiB is one of two universities that is a senior partner in Arctic Frontiers, and will participate in 2026 with several academic presentations, panel discussions and events that demonstrate the breadth of the university's Arctic-related research.
– There is great interest in the Arctic, and what is happening in the area is highly topical. But research on the Arctic and the high north has always been an important part of UiB. Arctic Frontiers is an important arena for highlighting the extensive research at UiB with relevance to the Arctic. This is more than a professional conference – it is a place to meet across disciplines, with politicians, business and citizens within a field that will become even more important in the future, says Rector Margareth Hagen, who is also participating in this year's conference.
UiB researchers contribute throughout the program, including in the fields of climate, oceans, geopolitics, energy transition and sustainable social development. The university also organizes its own side events in collaboration with national and international partners.
Arctic Frontiers 2026 brings together participants from all over the world, and UiB actively uses the arena to strengthen collaboration, share knowledge and promote research that is crucial for understanding and addressing changes in the high north.
