On Wednesday, Tove Fall, SLU Alumna of the Year 2021, received her award at a live broadcasted ceremony from Ultuna campus. Tove started her academic journey as a veterinary student at SLU in 1998.
- I am extremely honored and thankful for this award. I spent more than ten years at SLU. During my time as a student, I made friends for life. I also had very inspiring teachers who were always close to the latest scientific findings, Tove says in her presentation.
After the award was handed out, Tove gave a presentation about her student experiences at SLU, and then moved on to talk about her current research at Uppsala University, where she has worked since 2013. Today, Tove has her own research group with 16 team members, all with different competences.
The main focus of Tove's research have been to look at causes and consequences of diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. But since the pandemic came to Sweden, Tove and her research team have mainly focused on Covid-19, using same methods as they use with non-infection disease, working with large registries and databases.
- When the pandemic came to Sweden, there was a lot of uncertainty on how many people were infected. At that time, the testing was also very low. So I started thinking about how I could contribute to the disease surveillance. In times when everyone use a smartphone, I started thinking that maybe we should have an app where people could register their symptoms, and by doing that, we might be able to understand the disease spread of Covid-19.
After some googling, Tove found out that there was already a study that was launched in the UK called the COVID Symptom Study, and that a researcher in Malmö was about to take the app to Sweden. Tove teamed up with the researcher in Malmö and within a month they launched the app in Sweden.
Want to learn more about the app and Tove's Covid research? Watch her presentation.
The ceremony at Ultuna ended with a reception where some of Tove's former colleagues, SLU representatives, and supervisors Henrik Rönnberg and Helene Hamlin were invited. The group had rewarding discussions about the veterinarians' situation and current Covid research.
More information about Tove Fall, the award and prior winners.
Tove Fall received her Master of Science in Veterinary Sciences from SLU in 2005 and in 2009 she was awarded a doctorate at SLU. Today, Tove is a professor of molecular epidemiology and deputy head of department at the Department of Medical Sciences at Uppsala University. She receives this award not least for her contribution to the research on Covid-19.
slualumn@slu.se
+46 18 67 34 47 or +46 18 67 20 18