December Newsletter from EPINOR

Here are the key events to save in your calendars (dates are subject to change):

• Funding application deadline: 15th of February (see below)
• Online conference: sometime in April/May
• Summer school: will take place in August this year, most likely week 32, in Solstrand outside of Bergen
• EPINOR annual meeting: 2 November, back-to-back with the NOFE conference
• Combined winter school and workshop with extinguised guests: Tromsø 29 Nov – 3 Dec 2021
• Winter school on cancer epidemiology: 29/11-01/12
• ‘Future of epidemiology’ seminar: 2-3 December

In addition, EPINOR encourages members to organise local activities, such as workshops, journal clubs, shut up and write, etc.! EPINOR will cover lunch for participating members, if you send us an email first.

In Tromsø EPINOR will organise webinars titled “What’s your problem?” in the spring. In these webinars, a PhD-student presents a problem they have come across in their work (15-20 min). Afterwards, colleagues are invited to discuss and suggest possible solutions to the problem. If someone wants to arrange an activity or a webinar, please contact your local student representative.   

Funding applications

The main changes are:

• EPINOR will provide funding for research stays for a maximum of one month (equivalent to NOK 20 000)
• If there are few applicants, the committee will evaluate whether EPINOR can grant funding for longer periods than one month
• Deadline: 15th of February 2021. If there are still money left, a second round of funding applications will be announced. The deadline will be on the 15th of June 2021

EPINOR Junior Science Network – beyond 2021 

EPINOR has constituted a new steering committee which purpose is to continue the network of students and supervisors beyond 2021. The committee consists of the current student representatives, one post doc from NTNU, in addition to the administrative staff from each of the partner universities. If you have any questions about the new network, you are welcome to contact the committee members.   

A new research school 2022?  

The steering committee of EPINOR is considering applying for a new period of EPINOR funded by the Norwegian Research Council. If we decide to go for a new period, the deadline is fall 2021. For more information about the new grant details, see here

Presentations of the student representatives

EPINOR has four student representatives, and it is about time that they are properly introduced to the EPINOR network.

Atle Austnes Kongsvold (NTNU)

I have a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in human movement science from NTNU in Trondheim. For my master’s, I conducted a validation study of objective measurements of physical activity. Since I completed my master’s in 2016, I have continued working with this topic, and from August 2017 to February 2019 I was co-responsible for the data collection of objective physical activity measurements in The Trøndelag Health Study, where we collected data of approximately 38,000 individuals. I will be analysing these data during my PhD, that I started in September this year, at the Department of Public Health and Nursing at NTNU. The main goal is to identify determinants of physical activity – why are some people active, while others are not? I feel a lot of ownership to the data material and I look forward to work with it. In my spare time, I like to go for a run, and I’m also a fan of climbing.

Dagrun Slettebø Daltveit (UiB)

I am a statistician and a PhD candidate at UiB. In my project «Cancer risk in families with children with birth defects», I am studying associations between congenital birth defects and risk of cancer in children, as well as their siblings and parents. The project involves register data from four Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. The project is part of a larger Nordic collaboration project: “Nordic Countries Linked Birth and Cancer Registries Cohort Project”. The first paper has recently been published: Cancer risk in individuals with major birth defects: large Nordic population based case-control study among children, adolescents, and adults.

Mats Kirkeby Fjeld (UiO)

My name is Mats Fjeld and I’m a student representative from the University of Oslo. I am based at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, where I write about physical activity and chronic pain. I have started the second half of my project and I’m looking forward to continuing in EPINOR. Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas!

Erlend Hoftun Farbu (UiT)

I am a physiotherapist and I have a master’s degree from the University of Bergen. Before I started as a PhD student at UiT, I worked as a rope access technician in the petroleum industry and studied to become an engineer. In my PhD project, I am investigating whether working in cold environments (e.g., outdoors or at a cold store), increases the risk of chronic pain. Additionally, I am trying to find out if the weather, e.g., temperature or barometric pressure, affects pain tolerance. To study these relationships, I’m using data from the Tromsø Study.