President Alar Karis awarded three young University of Tartu researchers

The recipient of the Young Scientist Award of the Culture Fund of the President of the Republic is Anni Allikalt, Research Fellow of Bioorganic Chemistry. The Young IT Scientist Award was granted to Marharyta Domnich, Junior Research Fellow of Computational Neuroscience, and the Young Environmental Scientist Award went to Jeffrey Carbillet, Research Fellow in Animal Ecology. All three are University of Tartu researchers.

At the awards ceremony, President Alar Karis said that a researcher’s path is rarely smooth or straight. “Reaching new knowledge means, figuratively speaking, having to break through dense jungle, climb rocky ledges or wade through treacherous swamps. Yet this is the only way to build a level road for those who follow,” President Karis said.

“A researcher is therefore a builder and a pioneer. Good researchers are also able to build bridges – between science and society, between experienced scholars and the next generation, and between different disciplines and experiences,” the head of state said. He pointed out that this year’s laureates are united by their ability to make complex things understandable and useful, and help us arrive at smart decisions that shape the future. “Only in this way can trust grow out of research, and from trust comes the willingness to make wise choices,” the president added.

The recipient of the Young Scientist Award Anni Allikalt is a Research Fellow of Bioorganic Chemistry at the University of Tartu. Her research focuses on dopamine receptors. She studies how genetic differences that regulate these receptors’ function influence the effectiveness of medicines, drawing on data from the Estonian Biobank, among other sources. Understanding the role of genetic variation in drug response will enable adaptation of therapy to each individual in the future, through personalised medicine.

The recipient of the Young IT Scientist Award Marharyta Domnich, Junior Research Fellow of Computational Neuroscience at the University of Tartu, studies how to make the decisions of artificial intelligence systems understandable and trustworthy for people. Her work focuses on so-called explainable artificial intelligence, especially methods that show what needs to be changed in the input to make a system’s decision different. For example, it can be explained why a loan application was rejected and what would need to change for it to be approved. Such solutions are important in healthcare, finance and public administration, where decisions must be transparent and well-reasoned. Domnich is also developing new tools to put these methods into practice, for example, in medicine.

The recipient of the Young Environmental Scientist Award Jeffrey Carbillet is a Research Fellow in Animal Ecology at the University of Tartu, whose research aims to understand how wild animals adapt to environmental change. He has taken over as the leader of a long-running seabird research programme in Matsalu National Park, collecting data of global value on the effect of environmental change on seabirds. He also carries out unique ecological experiments to assess the transgenerational effects of pollution on seabird colonies.