After graduating from DTU with an MSc Eng in 2009, Kirstine Toxværd took a job in the consultancy industry, working with the environment, sustainability, and energy. However, she had a feeling that she was moving in the wrong direction professionally. The solution proved to be to take an industrial PhD, which provides the in-depth study she craves. And COWI will benefit from insight into the direction research is taking.
With a view to establishing her opportunities to change track, Kirstine Toxværd made contact with a number of potential employers. They were all seeking academic depth in the field.
She therefore contacted DTU Aqua to find out more about the MSc programme in Aquatic Science and Technology, where she was introduced to her current supervisor, Professor Torkel Gissel Nielsen.
“Torkel suggested that I should take an industrial PhD instead. He and my other supervisor—Morten Hjorth from COWI—had recently started working together on a project centred on examining the effects of different methods for dealing with oil spillages in the Arctic. This was the perfect opportunity for me,” relates Kirstine Toxværd.
As an industrial PhD student, Kirstine Toxværd is employed by COWI’s department for Water and Nature, and is simultaneously enrolled as a PhD student at DTU Aqua. She has a supervisor at the University and at the company and, as far as possible, she shares her time equally between the two workplaces.
“Whereas the time I spend at the company is primarily devoted to tangible problem solving, the university setting gives me the opportunity to continue learning at an accelerated pace. In my opinion, it’s a fantastic opportunity,” she adds.
Her PhD project is based on an international research project launched by the oil industry and coordinated by Akvaplan in Norway. The project involves participants from Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia and the United States. Kirstine’s work is financed by COWI, the COWI Foundation, Innovation Fund Denmark and the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers.
“Through this project, I’m involved in building up a new pool of knowledge that will help players in the oil and gas industry to be better prepared for dealing with oil spillages in the Arctic. It gives me the chance to work in cross-field of biology, technology and industry intersect, and it is precisely this type of consultancy I want to continue to explore,” says Kirstine Toxværd.
In the laboratory at the University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS), Kirstine has examined how different methods for eliminating oil spillages affect the smallest life forms in the sea—copepods—which are a source of nutrition for a variety of fish and whales. The clean-up methods whose effects the project examines are combustion, chemical spraying and natural decomposition of the oil on and in the sea ice.
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A course in how to shoot polar bears is one of the elements in Kirstine Toxværd’s career shift from consultant engineer to industrial PhD at DTU Aqua and COWI.
Read about the course in the article: "Bear watch on the ice."
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Morten Hjorth, Senior Specialist at COWI Water and Environment, works with consultancy in the fields of ecotoxicology and marine ecosystems.
What does COWI stand to gain from an industrial PhD like this one?
“For COWI, it’s interesting to be involved in a research project on the front line in the Arctic, facing a variety of technological and knowledge-related challenges to which we can help to find solutions. Research partnerships such as this one provide us with insight into the direction development is taking, and what the future needs will be. We can then take these aspects into consideration in our consultancy.”
What can the consultancy industry learn from the universities?
“In our work, we are heavily dependent on the knowledge generated in expert environments like the one at DTU Aqua. We draw heavily on knowledge from the universities and pass it on through our consultancy work, and partnering on a project like this one gives us a better sense of what’s going on at the university; at the same time, the university can find out more about how we actually work.”
Do the universities have anything to learn from the consultancy industry?
“Through working relationships like this one, our university partners become more aware of what the industry needs in the context of knowledge and recruiting graduates. For example, they find out which skills universities need to teach students looking to work in areas where consultancy and research intersect.”