Newsmakers at KTH

Innovation reduces food waste

Niklas Wallhed, a student on the Sustainable Technology Masters programme, won first prize in ThinkTank 2030 idea competition for an innovation to cut food waste in grocery stores. His idea was to create a digital check on each product’s best before date. Via the barcode, that is in contact with a screen, customers can check in real time where they can find goods that are nearing their expiry date. These goods are sold at a marked down price when the best before date is about to expire. The competition is organised by Naturvetarna, the Swedish Association of Professional Scientists.

Researchers evaluate climate policies

Cecilia Hermansson , a researcher at the Department of Real Estate and Construction Management, has been appointed the new deputy chair of the Swedish Climate Policy Council. The Council is tasked with evaluating how well aligned the government’s combined policies are with the climate goals resolved on by parliament and the government. Hermansson, a former Senior Economist at Swedbank and member of the Swedish Fiscal Policy Council, will assume her new role at the end of the year. Sverker Sörlin, Professor of Environmental History, is a longer standing member of the Climate Policy Council.

Two new members of the Young Academy of Sweden

Shervin Bagheri , Professor of Fluid Mechanics, and Lucie Delemotte , Associate Professor of Biophysics, have been elected to the Young Academy of Sweden. The Academy is an independent forum for younger, leading researchers representing all research disciplines. Its operations rest on four pillars: internationalisation, outreach, science policy, and transdisciplinarity, and has 35-40 members. Five other researchers from KTH are already members of the Academy.

More research with industry partners

Three researchers at KTH have been awarded funds to finance externally employed doctoral students. The funds, SEK 2.5 million per doctoral student, have been granted by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research. The researchers, project titles and industry partners respectively, are: Jonas Faleskog , Fracture Mechanic Model for Coated Cemented Carbides, AB Sandvik Coromant; Jana Tumova , Restricted Reinforcement Learning for Network Control, Ericsson; Lars Jonsson , Interoperability between antennae on large platforms, Saab AB. A supervisor will also be appointed at the companies where the doctoral student projects are to be performed.

Reward for work on virus

Janosch Hauser , a doctoral student at the Division of Micro and Nanosystems, won the Widmer Award at MicroTas, an international conference on miniaturised systems within chemistry and life science. Hauser was rewarded for work on how to improve sample preparation for Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), a powerful technology that allows for visualising and analysing viral particles and to identify the virus family in order to improve sample taking of the coronavirus for example. His research, A microfluidic device for TEM sample preparation  (doi.org/10.1039/D0LC00724B) has been published in the periodical Lab on a Chip.

Materials Science veteran praised

John Ågren , Professor of Materials Science, has been awarded an ASM International Gold Medal for his longstanding work within Materials Science. ASM, the world’s largest organisation within materials science, highlighted Ågren’s breadth, that embraces both science – over 200 publications – innovation and entrepreneurship.

Large grants for humanities and social sciences

Three researchers at KTH have been granted just over SEK 29 million as part of the Swedish Research Council funds to the humanities and social sciences. The grants run to the end of 2024 and have been awarded to Sven Ove Hansson , Philosophy (SEK 4 million), Eva Szekely , Comparative Language Science and General Linguistics (SEK 3.5 million), and Jens Edlund , Language Engineering (SEK 22 million).

Text: Christer Gummeson