Grant for Pilot Project To Boost Danish Industry with Biophysics Facility

Professor Lise Arleth at the Center for Synthetic Biology and the Niels Bohr Institute has just received  2 million DKK for raising the Danish industry's awareness of the European Spallation Source and its possibilities. The granting bodies are Region Hovedstaden (Region administration of Greater Copenhagen) and University of Copenhagen.

Construction of the state of the art neutron physics facility has begun outside the south Sweden town of Lund, and will by its completion in 2019 be the world's leading within its field. The European Spallation Source (ESS) is based on an international collaboration, in which researchers at Center for Synthetic Biology has played a key part. Member of the Center's steering group Professor Kell Mortensen is among the originators of the project.

The ESS will make it possible for foreign as well as domestic researchers to study the nanostructures of materials and biological systems in very high resolutions. The biophysicists at Center for Synthetic Biology has already conducted research using these techniques at an older neutron-facility in Grenoble, France. This has led to  insights into membranes and membrane proteins, which have proven important in the crossdisciplinary research conducted at the Center. 

Together with three postdocs from her research group, Professor Lise Arleth will visit Danish companies to invite them to participate in the pilot project. Together with the participating companies, the researchers will identify which problems can be solved with   neutron and x-ray scattering at the ESS. This is directed at a broad range of companies including pharma, food and life sciences industry, to name a few.  

"In our research group we are specialists in small angle scattering, which is the technique that will be the starting point of the pilot project. We will use the experiences and results form this project to form the basis of a future Life Science portal, where companies can find help for studying their materials at the ESS and MAX-IV facilities. We are expecting to collaborate with up to 50 large and medium sized Danish enterprises", says Lise Arleth

Read more about Lise Arleth's research here: https://synbio.ku.dk/research/researcher_profiles/lise_arleth/

Read more about Kell Mortensen's research here: 
https://synbio.ku.dk/about_the_unik_synthetic_biology_centre/boards/kell-mortensen/