ACROBATIC Two-Day Research Symposium

🌟 Shaping the Future of Cancer Surgery – ACROBATIC Two-Day Research Symposium 2025 🌟
📍 June 2–3 | Hotel Vejlefjord

Over two inspiring days, the ACROBATIC Two-Day Research Symposium brought together more than 70 participants from across Denmark and beyond - spanning regions, disciplines, and career stages — to explore how we innovate, implement, and create real impact in surgical oncology.

💡 Key themes and highlights included:

🔹 Prehabilitation in 2025 – Chelsia Gillis and Anna Campbell MBE shared groundbreaking insights into nutritional and physical prehabilitation, emphasizing personalized approaches and the latest evidence-based strategies.

🔹 Personalized Surgical Pathways - We learned about AI-driven patient selection (Ismail Gogenur) and tailored interventions for older, frail cancer patients (Katharina Skovhus Prior), underscoring the importance of individualized perioperative care.

🔹 How to Write Winning Surgical Research Applications – Søren Paaske Johnsen and Lene Hjerrild Iversen led crucial discussions on improving protocol applications, reviewer expectations, and ensuring patient involvement in research design.

🔹 From Idea to Impact – Jens Christian Hedemann Sørensen offered valuable reflections on the entrepreneurial journey in surgical innovation.

🔹 ’Fly Me to the Moon’ – Early-Career Innovation – Talented young researchers shared visionary work in areas such as lymph node mapping, laser-guided interlocking osteotomies, recurrence detection, ctDNA, and microbiota (Caroline Lilja, Louise Krog, Mette-Julie Töffner Rasmussen, Christian Lind Nielsen and Sarah Jakobsen).
👏 A special congratulations to Christian Lind Nielsen, recipient of this year’s Fly Me to the Moon Award!

🔹 From Research to Real-World Practice - Thomas Skovgaard emphasized how implementation science helps move innovations from trial to clinic, followed by real examples from ACROBATIC projects (Bente Thoft Jensen, Caroline Lilja and Louise Krog).

🔹 Bold ACROBATIC projects – We were introduced to three ACROBATIC projects pushing the boundaries of data use, personalized treatment, and surgical research infrastructure in Denmark (Iñigo Iturrate, Gitte Fredberg Persson and Martin Bøgsted).

🔹 Work Environment, Research, and Career Development – The closing session brought together voices across the professional spectrum to discuss how clinical education and research can coexist with a healthy and sustainable work culture. Thank you to MD, PhD, Tora Haug, Dean at Health Aarhus University, Anne-Mette Hvas, Dean at @Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus Universitet University, and Søren Hjortshøj, Medical Director at Aalborg University Hospital, for joining the discussion.

🙌 Thank you to all speakers, moderators, and participants for contributing to an energizing and forward-thinking symposium!