Sahlgrenska Academy recognised their new honorary doctors

ACADEMIC CEREMONIES. We had a lovely and festive time at Medicinareberget when our new honorary doctors Michael Treshow and Jens Nielsen gave their lectures the day before they were conferred their honorary degrees. Among the special guests were several current honary doctors.

“Selecting Michael Treschow and Jens Nielsen was not a difficult choice for our board, with the crucial contributions they have made in strengthening Sahlgrenska Academy’s role within the life sciences. At Sahlgrenska Academy, we are honor and thrilled to able to associate prominent individuals closer by conferring honorary doctorates,” said Dean Agneta Holmäng during her opening remarks.

The highest appointment

Claes Gustafsson, who hosted Honorary Doctor Michael Treschow, noted in his introduction that the appointment of honary doctors is one of the highest recognitions given by a higher education institution without having defended a doctorate. He also expressed his happiness that Michael Treschow accepted the conferement.

“In recent years, the Government has allocated less funds for basic research while the Wallenberg Foundations and other private initiatives have taken a more prominent role. These funds are now crucial for the work of universities,” said Claes Gustafsson, who also noted that Michael Treschow, through his work on the board in the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (KAW) and through his interest in research, has contributed to ensuring that so much money can be awarded to higher education institutions in Sweden.

Inspiring lecture

Michael Treschow held an inspiring lecture that left the audience with a sense of hope. He noted that globalization, at least until the pandemic struck, has been a posiitive force that has made the lives of people around the world better. The development from local to regional and global perspectives has enabled better cooperation within all areas, from sports and art to research and entrepreneurship.

“History tends to repeat itself. Those of us born at the end of the Second World War recognize the pattern.”

The pandemic, war and inflation color our world at the moment. Politicians in many countries have taken a nationalistic tone and begun placing their own country’s needs first. But Michael Treschow left us with an optimistic message: globalisation has only taken a temporary pause.

“Researchers and businesses will cooperate to fix what has been broken and we will make sure it will more forward again. Now, in particularly, we need serious iniativies within technology and sustainability for everyone to continue this positive development,” says Michael Treschow.

Make a difference

He explained that throughout his career, he has been driven by a desire to make a difference for the climate and for humanity, from his first job as a civil engineer where he worked with methods for clearning waste water from oil-fired power plants to the board room for the multinational company Unilever, where its work helped small farmers produce larger harvests and thereby achieve a completely different life. Through his work with the Wallenberg Foundations, which donates approximately SEK 2 billion annually to Swedish higher education insititutions, he has been able to make cruicial contributions to research within many fields.

“I have had the previlage of being involved in developing many large projects. Currently there is the really exciting project GoCO Health Innovation City developing at AstraZeneca. Oligonova is another example where KAW has been able to play a crucial role.”

Many collaborators

Fredrik Bäckhed, host for Honorary Doctor Jens Nielsen, began by pointing out that Jens, like Michael, is a civicl engineer at heart, and also a microbiologist like Fredrik. It was very fortunate for Chalmers and for Gothenburg when Jens Nielsen was recruited to come here in 2008. The recruitment resulted in the establishment of the Area of Advance Health Engineering at Chalmers, which brought Chalmers and Sahlgrenska Academy closer together.

“There are many researchers in this hall that have received help in collaborations with Jens. We are very good at producing large quantities of biological material but we have no idea how we should analyze them,” says Fredrik Bäckhed.

“I’m glad and thankful and look forward to continued interaction with you.”

Applicable research

Jens Nielsen is a systems biologist whose research has led to a long series of patent applications and successful companies. During his lecture, the audience saw a researcher with many collaborations and many ideas, but, as he put it, “it’s good to have many ideas but also good to know which ideas you should kill off at an early stage.”

Benefit to society is always at the forefront for him. He does not like the common approach of categorising research as either basic or applied.

“All research should be able to be applied. Always look for how your research could be applied,” was his message to the audience in the hall.

When Nielsen explained that he was often called “Mr. Yeast”, the audience gave a laugh. He noted that yeast is a good model organism for an engineer who wants to learn about biology. Studies where he and his colleagues have changed the signal pathways in yeast cfells have led to the discovery of a similar preserved pathway for metabolism in human cells, which recently led to a publication in the journal Cell. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2023.01.014

In his talk, Nielsen gave a long list of examples of studies where he has collaborated with different researchers at Sahlgrenska Academy within many different areas, such as intestinal microbiota, Alzaheimer’s and breast cancer. And just as Fredrik Bäckhed noted in his introduction, many of these colloaborators were present listening to Jens Nielsen’s lecture on this day.

BY: ELIN LINDSTRÖM