We’re not just building a research center – we’re building the basis of future of collaborations

18.06.2026

Currently, employees and collaborators are gathering for a series of workshops on DNC 2.0 – the upcoming building for the Danish Neuroscience Center at Aarhus University Hospital. The focus is not only on bricks and square meters but also on how the physical environment can support the way people work, think, and create new knowledge together.

– The BRAIN UNIVERSE in DNC 2.0 will bring together and connect researchers, clinicians, and citizens across psychiatry and somatics. A shared understanding of this core idea is incredibly important, so it’s a pleasure that we have now started the process with user meetings, where we together define functions, collaboration surfaces, and content, says Professor and Chairman of the DNC Jens Chr. Hedemann Sørensen.

At the user meetings, employees are working on, among other things, how rooms and functions can support meetings across disciplines, create flexibility, and invite new forms of collaboration.

The ambition is to develop a center that not only reflects developments in neuroscience but actively contributes to them. For DNC, it’s about creating frameworks that encourage interdisciplinary collaboration across somatics and psychiatry – a fundamental element in the center’s vision. The new center will bring together researchers, clinicians, and other professional groups in a common environment where knowledge is shared and new solutions are developed in close interaction.

– The spaces we’re building now won’t just be neutral containers for future work. They’ll actively shape the way people meet, share knowledge, develop treatments, and come up with new ideas, says Head of Research at the Forensic Psychiatric Department, Morten Deleuran Terkildsen, who participates in the user meetings.

He continues:

– It’s actually a pretty amazing piece of work – building for a future we don’t fully know yet while also recognizing that buildings, technologies, tools, and people always create the world together.

DNC 2.0 is more than constructing a new building. It is a physical manifestation of the Danish Health Reform's merging of psychiatry and somatics, with an investment in future collaboration and in the communities that will help create the next generation of research and treatment for brain diseases.