Maria Rusan, who is a PhD student at Aarhus University and Aarhus University Hospital, has just received the Ministry of Education’s Elite Researcher travel grant of DKK 300,000.

2014.03.04 | Helle Horskjær Hansen

Maria Rusan is bringing her family with her to the USA. She will be spending the next 18 months at Harvard Medical School, Boston while completing her project.

For the next 18 months, her research will be carried out at the Dana Faber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, in Boston, USA. The PhD student from Aarhus has just received an Elite Researcher travel grant of DKK 300,000.

“The grant is a great financial help towards completing my project in Boston. I will be there for 18 months, and I am bringing my family along, so there are a lot of expenses,” says Maria Rusan, who has already started her American adventure.

“I have now been at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute for almost three months and I have already learned an incredible amount. It is an exciting, productive and stimulating environment with fantastic resources. I am very grateful to have been given this opportunity,” she says.

The grant is awarded to talented PhD students and contributes to ensuring that they can experience a longer period of studying abroad at the foremost research environments in the world. In this way it supports the internationalisation of Danish research.

From HPV infection to cancer

Maria Rusan’s research focuses on the link between HPV and cancers of the head and neck in relation to increasing our understanding of how a HPV infection can turn into cancer.

“The purpose of my research is to characterise genomic ‘events’ in head and neck cancer that are caused by chronic infection with HPV. Illustrating the HPV mechanisms that affect the development of cancer and the response to treatment is an important element in the project,” she says and continues:

“The research stay allows me to learn new techniques within next generation sequencing, which have transformed the carrying out of biological research, and which are perceived as a ‘game changer’ in virtually all biological fields.”

Maria Rusan emphasises that incidences of HPV-associated head and neck cancer have increased dramatically in recent decades, and that some researchers have described this as a virus-caused cancer epidemic.

Further information

PhD student Maria Rusan
Aarhus University, Department of Clinical Medicine and
Aarhus University Hospital, Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery
maria.rusan@ki.au.dk