By Astrid Helene Mortensen, Communication and Public Affairs

The thesis is more than just a final requirement. It’s where your academic path becomes uniquely your own. The moment when your degree takes on a distinct identity - yours.

For many students, getting to the point where it’s time to choose a thesis topic feels like standing at the edge of a cliff - equal parts exciting and terrifying. It’s the moment where all those years of lectures, late-night study sessions, and crammed deadlines lead to something that’s finally yours. A chance to dig into a topic that sparks your curiosity and maybe even make a little dent in your field.

Yet it’s not without its challenges. The process can feel overwhelming, as it brings with it a host of important (and sometimes intimidating) questions: What do I want to explore? Am I ready to narrow my focus? And perhaps most importantly, what kind of work do I genuinely enjoy doing?

From uncertainty to opportunity

This was the exact situation Sophia Pölhösová found herself in while choosing her thesis. “When we were given the list of thesis projects, I felt lost. Most of them were lab-based, and I just knew that wasn’t what I wanted,” she recalls.

What she didn’t expect was that this moment of uncertainty would lead her to a project - and a whole new field - that would change her academic path and reshape her career goals.

Among the traditional thesis options, one project stood out: a LeadENG initiative that aimed to assess balance and postural control in diabetic patients using only a smartphone. “I didn’t know these types of interdisciplinary projects even existed,” Sophia says. “But once I read about it, I thought: this is different”

What started as a mere desire to avoid the lab turned into an opportunity to blend biotechnology, clinical work, data science, and real-world healthcare.

Posture control via smartphone sensors

Sophia’s thesis compares a smartphone’s ability to measure postural control against the traditional force plate - a high-precision tool used in laboratories to assess forces applied to the floor while walking/running or just standing. By using the phone’s built-in motion sensors, she’s exploring whether simple, widely available technology could one day be used in clinical assessments, especially for at-risk populations like older diabetic patients.

“Imagine being able to monitor a patient’s stability remotely, from their own home,” she says. “That’s the kind of impact this could have.”

She’s collected data from both healthy individuals and patients in collaboration with Aalborg University Hospital and Steno Diabetes Center Nordjylland - bringing her research directly into the healthcare field.

A cross-disciplinary collaboration

Sophia’s work exemplifies the core philosophy of the LeadENG initiative: that complex problems are best tackled through collaboration between disciplines. Her thesis is guided by two supervisors - Trine Rolighed Thomsen, from the Department of Chemistry and Bioscience, and Anderson de Souza Castelo Oliveira, from the Department of Materials and Production.

“They balance each other perfectly,” Sophia says. “Trine helped set up the hospital collaboration, and Anderson supported me through the technical and data-heavy parts, like MATLAB, which I had never used before.”

The hands-on, patient-oriented nature of the project showed Sophia a completely new side of her field. “Before this, I thought biotech was just lab work or academia. But now I see so many other paths - like digital health, medical technology, and working directly with patients.”

She adds, “This project showed me what I really care about. It’s a completely different experience to work with real people, and to see how your work can actually make a difference.”

LeadENG

Aalborg University’s LeadENG initiative is designed to promote exactly this kind of cross-disciplinary learning. By encouraging students to explore collaborations across departments and industries, LeadENG broadens perspectives and builds real-world skills.

“For me, it was life-changing,” Sophia says. “It’s not just about the subject - it’s about discovering how your knowledge can be used in ways you never expected.”

Her story is proof that the right project can do more than fulfil academic requirements - it can open doors, reshape goals, and reveal whole new worlds of possibilities.