She can probably best be described as an accidental entrepreneur. It was certainly not a dream of starting her own business that brought Cecilie Knudsen to DTU after she had obtained a bachelor's degree in molecular biomedicine from the University of Copenhagen and had spent a gap year figuring out if she had chosen the right scientific career. In fact, entrepreneurship wasn't on her radar at all.
"During that gap year, I saw that Andreas (Hougaard Laustsen-Kiel—professor at DTU, ed.) had posted about a thesis project working on developing snake antivenom. And for the first time since I began my studies, I thought: 'Wow, this project was made for me,'" says Cecilie Knudsen.
Like the above-mentioned professor—who became her supervisor during the thesis writing—she is driven by a desire for research to benefit people. "His main priority is for the work to become something beyond just a research article, which aligns with my own values. That's what's great about science: You can use it to try to solve problems," she explains.
