The prize is named after Professor Niels A. Lassen, who until his death in 1997 was considered one of the most important medical researchers of the 20th Century, judging from both a Danish and an International standard. With groundbreaking techniques, his research investigated blood flow in the human brain and uncovered regulation of the blood flow in different regions of the brain in accordance with the level of activities in the same regions.

Leif Østergaard is born in 1965 and has completed two university degrees - MSc in Mathematics and Physics in 1992 and Candidate of Medicine in 1994. He defended both his PhD thesis and his Doctors Dissertation in 2000. After this he was employed within brain research in Aarhus using the imaging diagnostics PET and MR. In 2001 support from The Danish National Research Foundation made it possible to start Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience (CFIN). Leif Østergaard was appointed head of CFIN in 2004. Same year he was appointed Professor of Experimental Neuroradiology at Aarhus University and Chief Physician at Department of Neuroradiology, Aarhus University Hospital.

Leif Østergaard’s own research covers a large area especially related to the investigation of the functions and diseases of the human brain using magnetic resonance (MR). CFINs research covers e.g. cognitive processes and development of methods to decoding the microscopic structure of the human brain with MR. Leif Østergaard’s research area has in recent years focused on blood flow in the capillaries of the human brain. Disruptions of this blood flow may have important meaning for the development of diseases in the brain, such as dementia.

Contact

Leif Østergaard
https://pure.au.dk/portal/en/persons/leif-oestergaard