Tine Kalac PhD Student

Biomaterials, such as wood, have served as the foundation in human engineering for millennia, yet details on their exact structural organization often remain elusive. Electron diffraction, a powerful technique for studying crystalline structures, is typically regarded as limited to stable, inorganic systems, and is thought to be unsuitable for studying organic soft matter. However, an increasing body of research is demonstrating otherwise – with advanced equipment and data analysis methods, electron diffraction can now provide unprecedented insight into the structure of biomaterials at the nanoscale. My project aims to develop and deploy electron diffraction-based methods specifically tailored for biomaterial analysis. By doing so, we aim at unlocking a deeper understanding of these complex material systems that have long been central to human civilization.

Tine Kalac is a PhD candidate and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions fellow, supervised by Prof. Tom Willhammar at Stockholm University. He received his B.Sc. degree in Wood Science and Technology at the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia), and his M.Sc. in Fibre and Polymer Engineering at Aalto University (Finland), specialising in using scattering methods for characterising biomaterials.

Group website: www.willhammargroup.com