“Brilliant” Claus Hviid Christensen, Nexus CEO, receives honorary doctorate from SDU
The prestigious award was announced by the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) on 26 October 2018 with Henrik Bindslev, Dean of its Technical Faculty, describing Claus as “a brilliant researcher with a sky-high h-index.” The h-index measures the impact of a scientist based on the number of citations their papers have received in other publications.
Mr Bindslev also singled out Claus Hviid Christensen’s ability to take fundamental research and apply it successfully in a commercial environment. “[He] is working on the basic-level science, creating new insights, and on the practical level, making new inventions – putting them into use and following through with them,” he said.
Many times I’ve seen how hard it is to do truly excellent research, and many times I’ve seen how hard it is to do business and develop products. Both are incredibly difficult. But for me the ultimate intellectual challenge is to do both at the same time: do highly ambitious research which can be directly applied to products and new services.
Nexus is an independent company that provides research & development services to Palsgaard’s emulsifiers and stabilizers business. Claus Hviid Christensen, who was appointed Nexus CEO in March 2017, said the honorary doctorate had “come out of the blue”, adding: “My immediate reaction was deep astonishment. But once the news had sunk in I felt very proud and very honoured.”
He continued: “Many times I’ve seen how hard it is to do truly excellent research, and many times I’ve seen how hard it is to do business and develop products. Both are incredibly difficult. But for me the ultimate intellectual challenge is to do both at the same time: do highly ambitious research which can be directly applied to products and new services.”
A short video explaining the decision to award Claus Hviid Christensen the doctorate and his reaction can be viewed here
