Research group Structural dynamics of aqueous solutions (SDAQS)

Researchers uncover how glycerol, a common cryoprotectant, manipulates water's behavior at extremely low temperatures to prevent ice formation. The study, published in Nature Communications, provides a deeper understanding of the complex interplay between glycerol and water, with profound implications for cryopreservation – the science of preserving biological materials at ultra-low temperatures. This is an international research effort, led by Stockholm University (SU), in collaboration with Pohang University of Science and Technology (Republic of Korea), RIKEN SPring-8 Center (Japan) and Brooklyn College of the City University of New York (USA).

Anita Girelli is a new fellow in the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions program from the European Commission in 2024. Originally from Verona in Italy, Anita came to Fysikum in 2022 to start her first postdoc with Foivos Perakis. The way from Italy to Sweden was not always straight forward. For one, Anita took some time to fall in love with physics— I always liked math but at my first contact with physics, I thought it was weird and boring.

Foivos Perakis was born and raised in Athens, Greece. Already at high school he was attracted to math, physics or computer science. During his studies at the Physics department at the University of Crete, he took the opportunity to study as an ERASMUS student at the University of Amsterdam. Later on, Foivos did his PhD in University of Zurich and a postdoc at Stanford. In 2016 he moved to Sweden as a researcher at Fysikum. He was appointed as an assistant professor in 2019 and a Wallenberg Fellow in 2023. His research group focuses on liquid-liquid transitions and proteins in crowded and cryogenic environments.

Proteins are responsible for many of the body’s functions and understanding protein dynamics in cells enables scientists to learn more about drug design and disease pathology. Now, an international research team has identified a new way of probing protein dynamics using the high repetition rate and coherence of the X-ray flashes produced by the European X-ray Free-Electron Laser (EuXFEL). The study, published in Nature Communications, uses a technique called megahertz X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy (MHz-XPCS) and could open new applications in health and pharmaceuticals. The study was led by Stockholm University, the University of Tübingen, the University of Siegen as well as EuXFEL and used the Materials Imaging and Dynamics (MID) instrument at EuXFEL to examine antibody protein solutions. The X-ray laser produces millions of flashes per second, enabling scientists to investigate proteins on time scales shorter than a microsecond and on length scales as small as a molecule.