By David Vranicar
dav@adm.au.dk
In 2010, the European Union has been in a giving mood since long before the holiday season.
In the spring, the EU shelled out about €100 billion to help Greece’s floundering economy. A few months later, Ireland was offered €85 billion in assistance to help rectify its economic issues. Experts wonder if Portugal is next in line.
But it’s not just struggling economies that have been helped out by the EU in 2010. Just ask Jiong Li, a researcher and associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Social Medicine at Aarhus University who was on the receiving end of a generous EU grant.
Originally from China, Jiong was awarded a research grant from the EU for nearly €1.5 million – or about DKK 10 million – earlier this year. And even though the €1.5 million is small change compared to the sums being doled out by the EU around Europe, Jiong is grateful to have gotten funding when money is stretched thin.
“It’s great to hear the news,” Jiong says of being awarded the grant, “because it turns out that the research money is now decreasing. So it’s good to have this fund.”
Jiong, who has been at AU since 2006, will focus his research on the effects that hormonal changes in pregnant women have on the mental and physical health of the fetus before and after birth. To conduct this research, he will draw upon the detailed health registers that are kept in Denmark and other Nordic countries, which, according to Jiong, have the world’s best database of citizen health records.
Jiong hopes that his research will help the medical community predict which prenatal factors lead to certain medical conditions later on – be it mental health issues, diabetes, cancer, etc.
