SEK 120 million for Wood Science Centre
SEK 120 million for a joint research centre will provide Chalmers and KTH together with the opportunity to develop new technology and new products aimed at strengthening the Swedish forestry industry. This grant, the first stage of a larger project, comes from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.
The Wallenberg Wood Science Centre will gather together leading edge research currently underway in Sweden within this field and facilitate the transfer of research results to industrial applications. New technology and new products with enhanced degrees of added value are essential for the forestry industry in the current situation when parts of the paper production industry are leaving Sweden.
The coordination of operations between KTH and Chalmers, the universities that the financier has assessed as being strongest in this field in Sweden, has been a central issue as the grant covers a three-year period. This is also fully in line with both universities’ intentions to cooperate to a greater degree.
“Now we will be coordinating resources and expertise instead of competing around the same developments. Utilising the different profiles at Chalmers and KTH will generate new opportunities and is something that should happen more often,” says the KTH and Chalmers Presidents Peter Gudmundson and Karin Markides, who will both be members of the Board of the new Centre.
The size of the grant, which includes a management function located at KTH, provides the Wallenberg Wood Science Centre with the preconditions for becoming a research environment which can compete well internationally.
“This is a fantastic opportunity to strengthen Swedish wood science research and contribute to the introduction of new industrial products at the same time. We will be combining newer disciplines such as nanotechnology and biotechnology with established timber product research. The long term goal is products with major technical content,” says the Centre’s Director Lars Berglund, Professor of Biocomposites at KTH.
The Centre will have three sections and will gather together a considerable number of researchers. One aim, according to Tuula Teeri, Deputy President of KTH and Professor of Wood Biotechnology, is to develop new methods and products for both the process technology that the industry has already made major investments in and for totally new areas.
In the section that deals with separation science, the goal is to efficiently develop not only pulp fibre but also other elements of the wood for the production of materials other than paper. For researchers within the materials section the challenge will be to further refine these elements so that they can be used for different types of material.
The third section deals with putting together the new materials from the elements. Composites are one example of an area in which Paul Gatenholm, Professor of Biopolymer Technology at Chalmers, already has his sights on a new generation of cellulose-based reinforcing elements.
Hans Theliander, one of the research managers within the Centre and Professor of Forest Product and Chemical Engineering at Chalmers, emphasises the value of this joint investment to Chalmers and KTH.
“We will be working closely together, this will be one project run on two campuses. As we possess complementary competences and take the best components from each university, this will become extremely efficient,” he asserts.
Contact: Lars Berglund, KTH, 08-790 8118
Contact: Hans Theliander, Chalmers, 031-772 2992