TEAM
BIRGITTE BERENTSEN
PhD
Birgitte Berentsen has a PhD in Neuroscience and is project manager for Brain-gut research group at University of Bergen, coordinator and project manager at the National Centre for Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders, at Haukeland University Hospital. Together with her team, Berentsen has built “Mage-tarmskolen”, an internet-guided multidisciplinary self-care management program, an interdisciplinary outpatient clinic, and recently a Chat-bot-app for patients with irritable bowel syndrome.
Berentsen has been engaged in research since 2008 and supervises master -and PhD candidates in clinical nutrition, human physiology, neuroscience and medical cell biology. She has experience in both clinical and experimental research using animal models. Her research interest involves the enteric nervous system and brain-gut-microbiota interactions in IBS and Parkinson’s disease, in addition to eHealth and internet-guided clinical treatment of IBS.
Arvid Lundervold
BSc, MD, PhD
I am a professor in medical information technology at the University of Bergen, Norway.
My current research interests are in the fields of medical image processing and pattern recognition; multimodal and functional imaging (in brain, kidney and in oncology); image segmentation; image registration; longitudinal imaging; imaging-based biomarkers; mathematical and statistical modeling including machine learning.
I have been programming in C and later MATLAB, R and Python for more than 25 years. During these years I have produced >100 publications including peer reviewed journal articles and conference proceedings.
| MMIV 
| UiB 
| Google Scholar 
Astri Lundervold
PhD
Astri J. Lundervold is a professor and specialist in clinical neuropsychology. She is currently the head of the Neuropsychological outpatient clinic and the clinical cognitive neuroscience research group (C-CNS) at the Faculty of psychology, University of Bergen.
The research group is involved in neuropsychological research on topics related to normal function and neuropsychiatric and somatic disorders. Lundervold is involved in several multidisciplinary projects. She has a longstanding involvement in the Bergen Child Study and a project on aging – cognition, brain imaging and genetics, and is currently a partner in K. G. Jebsen Center for Neuropsychiatric disorder and a domain expert in INTROMAT.
She has supervised more than 20 PhD students and postdocs associated with these and other projects. Astri J. Lundervold will be responsible for cognition and emotion workpackage in the Brain Gut project.
GÜLEN ARSLAN LIED
MD, PhD
Gülen Arslan Lied is specialist in gastroenterology and allergy, Haukeland University Hospital and Head of the Center for Nutrition, University of Bergen. She has engaged in active research since 2001 and received personal scholarships (Norwegian Research Council, NIFES and BFS: Internationalization programme) and research grants from different authorities (Norwegian Research Council, Helse-Vest).
Lied supervises PhD candidates in medicine and nutrition, and master students in human and clinical nutrition. She has wide experience in the planning and organization of clinical and experimental research projects also including randomized clinical trials. Her research primarily focuses on functional gastrointestinal diseases, diet-gut microbiota interactions, inflammation, fecal microbiota transplantation, gluten intolerance, food allergies and experimental studies (food allergy model in mice and colitis models induced by DSS or TNBS in rats).
Lied published 103 scientific papers, and she is first author in 42 papers and last author in 24 papers.
Bharath H N
PhD
Bharath has a PhD in electrical engineering form KU Leuven, Belgium.
Currently, he is a working as a postdoc at the department of clinical medicine, University of Bergen.
He has also worked as a Senior R&D Engineer at National Brain Research Centre, India and as a senior design engineer at WeP Peripherals Ltd, Mysore.
He has supervised master and summer intern students during his PhD. His research interest include machine learning, blind source separation and image processing for analyzing medical images and data.
Peder August Gudmundsen Lillebostad
MD, PhD
With a background in biology and molecular biology. I am currently enrolled in the MSc program in biomedicine at the University of Bergen.
I have always had a broad field of interests within the natural sciences, and I have recently developed a fascination for computer science. In line with this, I want to combine the best of both worlds, by exploring the application of machine learning to neuroimaging data (MRI) from IBS patients. Acknowledging IBS as a multifaceted disease, I hope to contribute to the understanding of the brain’s role in this complex interplay of physiology.
Mattis Bekkelund
Medical Student
I am a medical student and researcher at the National Competence Center for Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders. I am also enrolled in the Medical Student Research Programme at the University of Oslo.
I am currently involved in the DIAGAS project at Haukeland University Hospital. In this project we are using novel diagnostic tools including SmartPill™, the ultrasound meal accommodation test and heart rate variability to assess patients with symptoms of gastroparesis.
Other research interests include irritable bowel syndrome, especially in those with concomitant motility disorders. As such, I will be involved in the motility work package of the Brain Gut project.
ERICA PERSSON TEIGE
Medical Student
My name is Erica Persson Teige. I’m a medical student, born on the 15th of August 1997 and I am from a small town at the west coast of Norway called Måløy.
In 2017 I started medical school at the University of Bergen and had a wish to study the brain-gut axis. For many years I have been interested in nutrition and psychology and how this works together via the gut. At upper secondary school I educated as a health care worker and had a course called «technology and research learning» where my love for science grew bigger.
Besides working at Haukeland University Hospital, I am feeling privileged to study the brain-gut axis with a great team the coming years.
You can contact me on:
Epteige@online.no or erica.teige@student.uib.no
Eline Margrete Randulff Hillestad
Registered Dietitian, MSc
I have a degree in clinical nutrition and is currently working as a registered dietitian for the National Center for Functional Gastrointestinal disorder at Haukeland University Hospital. I am also engaged as a researcher in the Brain Gut-study where I guide the study participants through the diet intervention, which involves 12 weeks on the lowFODMAP diet.
My main interests are clinical nutrition in the fields of gastroenterology and functional gastrointestinal disorders, as well as neurogastroenterology and the brain-gut-microbiota-interaction.
In the process of writing my master thesis regarding a multidisciplinary outpatient clinic for patients with irritable bowel syndrome, my interest for research grew bigger. I am therefore very grateful to work with such knowledgeable colleagues in a multidisciplinary team exploring the heterogeneous clinical syndrome we label IBS.
Elisabeth Steinsvik
MD & PhD Student
Elisabeth K. Steinsvik is a MD and PhD student at Haukeland University Hospital and the University of Bergen. She studied medicine at the University of Bergen in 2004-2010, and had her medical internship at Haukeland University Hospital, Bergen, during 2011 – 2014.
Her field of interests are the interactions between gastric dysmotility and gastric hypersensitivity, as well as factors such as anxiety and depression. She specializes in using ultrasound in the evaluation of gastric motility, by the Ultrasound Meal Accommodation test.
In addition to being involved in the Brain-Gut project, she is involved in the DIAGAS study, with a special focus on visceral hypersensitivity and gastric dysmotility in patients with diabetic gastroparesis.
E-mail: Elisabeth.steinsvik@uib.no
Mariell Gaassand Straume
BSc
My name is Mariell Gaassand Straume and I am studying Clinical Nutrition at the University of Bergen. I am currently working on my master thesis about how the lowFODMAP diet can affect gut hormones in blood, and feel really excited to be part of the Brain Gut team.
Stella Hellgren Rasmussen
BSc
Stella Hellgren Rasmussen
I am currently finishing my master’s in clinical nutrition at the University of Bergen. For my final year I am working with this team to write my master thesis where I am looking at how the lowFODMAP diet can affect IBS-symptoms and clinical biochemistry status.
For my bachelor thesis I did a literature review study to evaluate the effect of probiotic supplementation on IBS symptoms, and during that time I developed great interest in IBS, diet and microbiota. I am happy that I can continue to study this complex and interesting topic by joining the Brain Gut project.