Professor Signe Normand receives the Victor Albeck Award

By Ida Hammerich Nielson

Professor of Biology Signe Normand receives the 2022 Victor Albeck Award for her ground-breaking research into climate change and nature protection.

Signe Normand has developed innovative methods for understanding the effect on the planet of environmental and climate changes across time and space. She is one of a few researchers globally – and the only one in Denmark – to combine special drone- and satellite-based images, so-called remote sensing, with i.a. ecological insight and studies of growth rings in trees and shrubs. She has headed several field expeditions to Greenland and compiled unique data sets using the new methodology.

Signe Normand’s research provides insight into how vegetation and biodiversity change – from past to future, from the tropics to the Arctic –  seen through a microscope and from the air. Among other things, Signe Normand has helped demonstrate the complexity of how the annual growth and height of Arctic shrubs change concurrently with climate changes.

She has also developed a model for understanding changes in the spread of species since the last Ice Age, including the paradox that the species after thousands of years still cannot be found in all the parts of the world with a suitable climate.

Signe Normand has an impressive scientific production, and she has received the Elite Research Prize as well as a number of national and international awards and grants. Her research is interdisciplinary, bridging the gap between fields and perspectives, and in 2021, she was elected chairperson of Denmark’s first Biodiversity Council. 

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Facts about the award

The DKK-100,000 Victor Albeck Award is awarded to younger talented researchers employed by or affiliated with Aarhus University, and who are doing scientific work and have presented one or more significant results which promise well for the future.

It was awarded for the first time in 2021 at the ceremonies in May, where also the Holst-Knudsen Award for Scientific Research and the Aarhus University Research Foundation PhD Awards are awarded.