25 years with bugs

Harmful mites, aphids, weevils, butterflies, mosquitoes and flies are some of the insects that 57-year-old Senior Researcher Henrik Skovgård from PATENT in Flakkebjerg has studied in his 25 years as a public servant. He could celebrate his anniversary as an entomologist in July 2015.

- Those 25 years have seen some wonderful and exciting times, but occasionally also frustrating times, including the various rounds of cutbacks and redundancy and thereby having to say goodbye to good colleagues, says Henrik.

Working with research in insects has brought Henrik far and wide. He has not had any particular career plan. Instead, he has gone with the flow.   

He began his academic career with a master degree from University of Copenhagen, where he studied a plant growth hormone with the aim of finding out if it could affect the growth of harmful aphids in cereals. He got a PhD in population biology at University of Copenhagen. It was sponsored by Danida and he defended it in 1989. He had researched the destructive impact of spider mites on cassava in Kenya by Lake Victoria.

This project was followed by yet another Danida project in Kenya close to Mombasa. This time it was a collaboration between University of Copenhagen and Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences that dealt with biological control of maize stem borer. This project lasted for half a year. After arriving home from Kenya, Henrik got a job with the Danish Pest Infestation Laboratory in Sorgenfri, where he was employed from 1996-2010 and worked primarily with biological control of annoying stable flies and other flies using a parasitic insect.

- Then the Danish Pest Infestation Laboratory closed and the people that were left, including me, were moved to Flakkebjerg in September 2010. It was somewhat of an upheaval because I came from a world of insects and other pests to a world of plants, says Henrik and continues:

- People here in Flakkebjerg are really nice and I like being here, but you cannot just jump into their community. It is something that takes time and you have to work at it. There are only six of us left from the former Danish Pest Infestation Laboratory. It takes time and patience to change from focusing on insects as pests in buildings, storage and farm animals to insects as pests in plants. However, I think things are moving in the right direction even though it is a challenge. Research in insects as pests, i.e. weird bugs is not on the top-ten list of activities that attract attention from donors, so we often end up with many small projects that point in all sorts of directions. That also makes it difficult to attract PhD students.

Henrik still has good contact with PhD students, though, in that he recently became a member of the PhD committee instead of Mogens Nicolaisen.

- Without all these inspiring and energetic young people from Denmark and abroad the days would be just a bit more grey, says Henrik. You can read the article about the PhD committee here