VOLT PhD student receives prestigious Elite Forsk travel grant

PhD student Marta Contreras Serrano from VOLT (Center for Volatile Interactions) at Copenhagen University's Department of Biology has received an EliteForsk travel grant from the Ministry of Higher Education and Research. The award ceremony took place at the Black Diamond on Tuesday, February 25, where the EliteForsk prizes and travel grants were awarded by Minister of Higher Education and Research Christina Egelund and Her Majesty Queen Mary.


The programme also included a welcome by Mikkel Leihardt, three musical moments by Lasse Matthiessen, and discussions with the five Elite Forsk prize winners where Line Friis Frederiksen and Christina Egelund asked a few questions each.

Marta's project is titled "Invisible Conversations: Revealing Plants' Stress Signals in the Air", and she is already enjoying her travel grant in Australia where she is doing field work. For this reason, her PhD supervisor Jing Tang attended the ceremony on her behalf and a sleepy but very excited Marta joined on zoom from Australia where it was 2 in the morning. She was even lucky enough to have a quick chat with Christina Egelund, and take a picture with her!


You can read more about Marta's project on the Ministry of Higher Education and Research website here.

The scholarship is DKK 200,000 and this year it was awarded to 17 PhD students nationwide.