Research Fellowship

UEG will award two fellowships of € 50,000 each to two researchers to spend 12 months working with a renowned European principal investigator.

The main purpose of this fellowship is to support the development of a basic or clinical research project and give the fellows the chance to improve their scientific skills. The fellowships are highly recommended for young researchers who are not in a position to develop their ideas at their current place of work.

We encourage young researchers from Inclusiveness Target Countries (as defined for COST Actions) to apply! 

Application is closed.

The grant is open to both basic and clinical researchers, and to both medical and non-medical graduates.

At the time of application, applicants for the programme must:

• be a myUEG Associate
• be clinical or basic researchers specialised in digestive diseases according to their track record
• have completed their PhD, but no longer than five years ago or be in gastroenterology/hepatology/surgery training, or have completed it within the last five years (add two years per child for main carer, but max. 4 years)
• not holding an academic permanent position
• have significant research experience (according to their track record)
• be fluent in English
• reside in Europe, in a country bordering the Mediterranean Sea, or in a country represented by a UEG National Member Society 

Based on the fulfilment of basic criteria, in 2025 at least one of the fellowships will be assigned to the top-ranked candidate from an Inclusiveness Target Country (as defined for COST Actions). Final decision remains with the Research Committee. 

The grant will be awarded to the same recipient only once. For further details, read our application criteria.

André Simão was awarded the UEG Research Fellowship 2024 to develop the research project "Serum microRNAs as Biomarkers of Metabolic Dysfunction-Associated Steatotic Liver Disease and Progression towards Cholangiocarcinoma" with Prof. Jesús Bañales at the Biogipuzkoa Health Research Institute, Donostia Univ. Hospital, San Sebastian, Spain.

He completed his PhD in Pharmacy at the University of Lisbon, where he studied mitochondria-targeting microRNAs in liver disease and skeletal muscle therapy. Currently, he is focusing on miRNA-containing extracellular vesicles from adipose tissue in disease pathogenesis. In 2023, he started an MSc in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, specializing in multi-omics. This theoretical framework will now be applied to discover and characterize novel serum EV-miRNAs with biomarker potential in the ongoing research under the fellowship.

Katarzyna Radke received the UEG Research Fellowship 2024 to pursue the project "Precision therapy in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma: integrating strategies to combat resistance" with Prof. Luis Arnes Perez at the University of Copenhagen's Biotech Research and Innovation Center (BRIC), Denmark. 

Katarzyna is an Associate Researcher in the Division of Translational Cancer Research at Lund University, Sweden. She has recently defended her PhD thesis on "Therapeutic strategies for high-risk neuroblastoma" (PI Daniel Bexell). Her research interests include patient-derived models, tumour plasticity and combination drug testing at scale.