Elsa Palmkvist

My name is Elsa Palmkvist. I went to med school in Lund, I graduated from there in 2020 and in 2021, I became a doctoral student. I did my medical internship in Kristianstad, and in 2024, I started my position as resident physician at the paediatric clinic at Skåne University Hospital.

My research is about type 1 diabetes. The focus is to find out, or come closer to an answer to, why people get diabetes, especially why diabetes is still increasing in Sweden.

My path to postgraduate research studies went through my Master's thesis, I had the same supervisor as I have now. I felt that it was inspiring, and that we worked well together. So when she asked if I wanted to become a PhD student, it felt like a natural step to take. It is also fun to be able to dive deep into a subject and read up a lot about it, and to become an expert in it, paediatric medicine is otherwise a very broad subject. I am also a creative person, and as a PhD student, I get to express my creativity by thinking of new ideas, testing them and contribute to new knowledge. It is a good complement to working as a physician.