20 per cent more students will be offered a place at Natural Sciences this year. There are also still vacant places, because the university has increased its capacity in the wake of corona.

Professor Jørgen Kjems and the consortium Virofight has received funding from the EU FET-OPEN program to advance novel antiviral treatment. Instead of targeting virus-specific proteins or enzymes by small molecules as done by current antivirals, the Virofight project will develop DNA-based nano-shells that engulf and neutralize entire viruses. This novel approach has the potential to help fight multiple viruses with one generic approach.

The university invites partners, staff and students to a welcome reception for Dean Kristian Pedersen 19 August 2020.

Peter Jørgensen is newly appointed professor in mathematics at Aarhus University. Previously he was a professor at Newcastle University.

25% more have chosen one of Aarhus University’s IT programmes as their first priority. The three programmes at the Faculty of Natural Sciences - Computer Science, IT Product Development and Data Science - all seem to be getting good admission.

As expected, applications to Denmark’s higher education degree programmes have increased this year – this also applies to Aarhus University, which has received 5% more first-choice applications compared to last year. Preliminary figures show that engineering and IT degree programmes have seen the greatest increase.

Ebbe S. Andersen is awarded a DKK 10 million Ascending Investigator Grant from the Novo Nordisk Foundation’s Research Leader Programme. The research project aims at using recently developed RNA nanotechnology-based assembly lines, sensors and nanorobots to improve biochemical reactions inside cells. The potential outcome will be improved bacterial and yeast production strains that can be used to generate biofuels, specialty chemicals, and biological drugs from renewable resources.