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Unnur Anna Valdimarsdóttir

Unnur Anna Valdimarsdóttir is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Unnur Anna Valdimarsdóttir rather than just read about it. In short: Unnur Anna Valdimarsdóttir (born 1972) is a professor in epidemiology at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Iceland. Her research focuses on the role of trauma and other life adversities in health and disease development.

Unnur Anna Valdimarsdóttir — main illustration
Unnur Anna Valdimarsdóttir — illustration

Key takeaways

  • Unnur Anna Valdimarsdóttir belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
  • Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
  • Connect Unnur Anna Valdimarsdóttir to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
  • Reproduce the core statement of Unnur Anna Valdimarsdóttir from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Unnur Anna Valdimarsdóttir (born 1972) is a professor in epidemiology at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Iceland. Her research focuses on the role of trauma and other life adversities in health and disease development.

Professional experience Unnur completed her matriculation examination from the natural sciences track of Akureyri Junior College in 1992 and a BA in psychology from the University of Iceland in 1996. She started a doctoral programme at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm in 1999 and completed her doctorate in clinical epidemiology in 2003. Her doctoral dissertation, "The loss of a husband to cancer: additional and avoidable psychological traumata", focused on widows' health and adjustment after their husbands'' sickness and death due to cancer. From 2003 to 2006, Unnur continued working as a post doctoral fellow at Karolinska Institutet. There she laid the foundation for her research plan to the present. In 2007 Unnur was hired as an associate professor in epidemiology at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Iceland and was promoted to professor in 2012. She served as Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Medicine from 2013 to 2017. Unnur became the first head of a newly founded cross-disciplinary master's and doctoral programme in Public Health in 2007 and served in that capacity until 2017. She has taught courses for medical students and graduate students in epidemiology and other public health-related subjects and has also supervised many master's and PhD students. Unnur has been an adjunct professor at the Department of Epidemiology at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health in Boston since 2013, and a guest professor at the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Karolinska Institutet since 2015. She has also been active in advising students and research collaboration with scholars of those institutions.

Research The overarching aim of Unnur's research team is to advance knowledge on, on the role of trauma and other life adversities such as loss of a loved one, diagnosis of cancer, natural catastrophes, and violence, in the development of various diseases. She has published her findings in approximately 150 scientific articles. Several of these articles have been published in some of the world's leading scientific medical journals, e.g., The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Lancet Psychiatry, and BMJ. Unnur has also presented her findings in invited lectures at institutions of foreign universities and at international conferences.

Acknowledgements and grants Unnur has received many acknowledgements for her work, including: Science and Technology Incentive Award (2010), award from the Award Fund of Þórður Harðarson and Árni Kristinsson in medicine and related fields (2017) for outstanding research achievements. In 2017, she was the first woman to be named Female Academic of the Year. Unnur has received many research grants, including a recent Grant of Excellence from The Icelandic Centre for Research, and a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council for research on the genetics of varying health trajectories following trauma.

Personal life Unnur's parents are Guðrún Jónsdóttir (b. 1939), hairdresser, and Valdimar Ágúst Steingrímsson (b. 1939), patrolman. Her siblings are Pétur Valdimarsson (b. 1966), graduate in business administration, and Jóna Ellen Valdimarsdóttir (b. 1977), registered nurse. Unnur's husband is Pétur Hafliði Marteinsson (b. 1973), entrepreneur, and they have one daughter. In 2023, she was awarded the Order of the Falcon for her contributions to research.

Main written works Valdimarsdóttir, Unnur A; Lu, Donghao; Lund, Sigrún H; Fall, Katja; Fang, Fang; Kristjánsson, Þórður; Guðbjartsson, Daníel; Helgason, Agnar; Stefánsson, Kári (12 November 2019). "The mother's risk of premature death after child loss across two centuries". eLife. 8 e43476. doi:10.7554/eLife.43476. PMC 6850766. PMID 31711568. Song, Huan; Fang, Fang; Arnberg, Filip K.; Mataix-Cols, David; Cruz, Lorena Fernández de la; Almqvist, Catarina; Fall, Katja; Lichtenstein, Paul; Thorgeirsson, Gudmundur; Valdimarsdóttir, Unnur A. (10 April 2019). "Stress related disorders and risk of cardiovascular disease: population based, sibling controlled cohort study". BMJ. 365 l1255. doi:10.1136/bmj.l1255. PMC 6457109. PMID 30971390. Song, Huan; Fang, Fang; Tomasson, Gunnar; Arnberg, Filip K.; Mataix-Cols, David; Cruz, Lorena Fernández de la; Almqvist, Catarina; Fall, Katja; Valdimarsdóttir, Unnur A. (19 June 2018). "Association of Stress-Related Disorders With Subsequent Autoimmune Disease". JAMA. 319 (23): 2388–2400. doi:10.1001/jama.2018.7028. PMC 6583688. PMID 29922828. Zhu, J.; Fang, F.; Sjölander, A.; Fall, K.; Adami, H.O.; Valdimarsdóttir, U. (August 2017). "First-onset mental disorders after cancer diagnosis and cancer-specific mortality: a nationwide cohort study". Annals of Oncology. 28 (8): 1964–1969. doi:10.1093/annonc/mdx265. PMID 28525559. Fang, Fang; Fall, Katja; Mittleman, Murray A.; Sparén, Pär; Ye, Weimin; Adami, Hans-Olov; Valdimarsdóttir, Unnur (5 April 2012). "Suicide and Cardiovascular Death after a Cancer Diagnosis". New England Journal of Medicine. 366 (14): 1310–1318. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa1110307. PMID 22475594.

References

Illustrations

Unnur Anna Valdimarsdóttir illustration

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Unnur Anna Valdimarsdóttir

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Unnur Anna Valdimarsdóttir claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Unnur Anna Valdimarsdóttir before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Unnur Anna Valdimarsdóttir ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Unnur Anna Valdimarsdóttir

In research
Unnur Anna Valdimarsdóttir appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry
Engineering practice reuses Unnur Anna Valdimarsdóttir in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom
Unnur Anna Valdimarsdóttir is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1972 births, Academic staff of the University of Iceland, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health faculty, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life
Look for Unnur Anna Valdimarsdóttir outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.
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How to study Unnur Anna Valdimarsdóttir in 20 minutes

  1. Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
  2. Close the page and write down what Unnur Anna Valdimarsdóttir means in your own words.
  3. Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
  4. Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
  5. Explain Unnur Anna Valdimarsdóttir out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Unnur Anna Valdimarsdóttir in simple terms?

Unnur Anna Valdimarsdóttir (born 1972) is a professor in epidemiology at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Iceland. Her research focuses on the role of trauma and other life adversities in health and disease development.

Why does Unnur Anna Valdimarsdóttir matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Unnur Anna Valdimarsdóttir?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Unnur Anna Valdimarsdóttir.

Tags

  • 1972 births
  • Academic staff of the University of Iceland
  • Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health faculty
  • Icelandic women academics
  • Living people
  • Recipients of the Order of the Falcon
  • University of Iceland alumni
  • Women epidemiologists

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