ABOUT KASPER PLANETA KEPP

Short scientific CV Born 23/7 1975. B.Sc. in physics/chemistry, RUC 1997. M.Sc.(cand. scient.), Copenhagen University, 2000. Novo Nordisk Scholarship Award, 2000. Ph.D., Lund University, 2004. EMBO long-term fellow, Yale University, 2005-2006. Villum-Kann Rasmussen postdoc, DTU/Stanford, 2007-2008. Consultant for The World Antidoping Agency (WADA) 2008-2009. National Young Elite Researcher Prize, 2009. FNU Steno Fellow, DTU, 2009-2011. Associate Professor, DTU, 2012-2016. Professor MSO, DTU, 2016-2023. Research affiliate METRICS, Stanford 2023- 150 scientific publications cited ~10,000 times, ~2000 students taught, ~250 reviews for journals 2005-2024.

Kasper P. Kepp is a Danish scientist, observer of society, and writer of stories critically exploring the boundaries between science, society & individual, and reality, history & myth/magic.

He grew up in a provincial town and moved to Copenhagen at the age of 20 to study at the university. After earning a Ph.D. in theoretical biochemistry from Lund University, he worked at Yale and Stanford Universities before becoming an associate professor and later Professor MSO at the Technical University of Denmark.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, he served as expert in Danish newspapers and provided critical context to the dominating policy views at the time, especially during the mink crisis, the emergence of the alpha variant in Spring 2021, and early 2022 when Denmark reopened.

In 2023, after publishing around 150 research articles, teaching chemistry to a few thousand students, and seeing how science was increasingly distracted and influenced by other forces in society, he decided to pause his academic career and write about his experiences instead.

His "modern fairy tales" are based loosely on his own life as a student and scientist in Denmark and typically combine scientific themes with spiritual and socially critical perspectives. Many of the stories are set in Copenhagen, the city where H. C. Andersen once lived and wrote.

The stories critically explore human history, society, and psychology through the eyes of a young, adventurous scientist living in a world that is not always rational or straightforward.

The themes deal with the challenges and limitations of the scientific approach, the hyper-efficient society that is Denmark in the 21st century, the grey zone between reality and human bias, fact and fiction, rationality and passion, and, ultimately, good and evil.