Six researchers share SEK 175 million from the Wallenberg Foundation
The importance of Arctic methane emissions for the climate, how matter is formed and broken down, evolutionary shifts in the plant kingdom, and new effective methods for producing bioactive substances that will meet future needs for medicines and advanced electronics. These are just a few examples of basic research at Stockholm University that has received funding from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.
Helen Coxall, professor of marine micropaleontology at the Department of geological sciences, Kálmán J Szabó, professor at the Department of organic chemistry, Örjan Gustafsson, professor of biogeochemistry at the Department of environmental science and the Bolin centre for climate research, Tanja Slotte, professor of ecological genomics at the Department of ecology, environment and plant sciences, Matthew Hayes, associate professor of astrophysics at the Department of astronomy and Henning Schmidt, professor of atomic physics at the Department of physics.
Photo: Rickard Kilström, Knut and Alice Wallenberg foundation, Jonas Enander, Anette Jansson-Bougt
”It is fantastic that Stockholm University has received a record number of project grants from the Foundation this year,” says Lena Mäler, Deputy vice president for science at Stockholm University.
Future scientific breakthroughs
Each year, the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation awards research grants in the fields of medicine, science and technology to research projects that are judged to have such high scientific potential that they have the potential to lead to future scientific breakthroughs. Each project is evaluated by a group of international experts in the respective field.
This year's research projects at Stockholm University are in marine micropaleontology, atomic, molecular and optical physics, organic chemistry, astrophysics, evolutionary genomics and environmental science.
Proof of quality
”It is particularly pleasing that the grants span all of our research environments and that all sections in the natural sciences have been awarded grants. We see this as evidence that the university's work with applications is paying off, but above all that the research in natural sciences at Stockholm University is of a very high quality,” says Lena Mäler.
Mika Sipponen, Johan Carlström, Vladimir Krasnov and Andreas Rydh at Stockholm University are also co-applicants for two research projects at KTH that have received research funding: Read more about the research projects
Fredrik Ronquist, professor at the Department of zoology, also receives research funding for the project ‘DarkTree: Charting the Dark Regions of the Insect Tree Using Computer Vision, Genomics, and Probabilistic Machine Learning’ at the Swedish Museum of Natural History.
Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation
Since 2011, when the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation established the project grant scheme, until 2024, 303 projects with a total budget of SEK 8.3 billion have been granted. Read more about the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation
The Atomic Physics division is pursuing experimental research in atomic collision physics dealing with interactions of positively and negatively charged atomic ions, molecular ions such as fullerenes, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), biomolecules, and clusters.
Group Slotte uses genomic tools to test predictions of evolutionary theory, with particular emphasis on the evolution of plant mating system variation and supergenes.
The main interest of the Szabó group is development of selective synthesis using transition-metal catalysis and organocatalysis targeting mainly fluorine and boron containing organic molecules.
At the Department of Astronomy, we use observations from optical to radio wavelengths combined with modelling to understand how galaxies were formed and evolve.
