NEWS Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation is allocating 120 million to four different research projects whose principal investigators are based at Umeå University. Following evaluations by international experts, these research projects have been judged to be innovative and at the forefront of international research. In total, the Foundation is allocating 900 million to 30 research projects across the country.
“This is truly welcome news, demonstrating that we have excellent research with great potential and that it stands up well in a highly competitive environment. These grants are awarded to projects considered to have the potential to lead to future scientific breakthroughs, and I would like to extend my warmest congratulations,” says Tora Holmberg, Vice-Chancellor of Umeå University.
Johannes Messinger, Professor at the Department of Plant Physiology. Photo: Mattias Pettersson
Johannes Messinger, Professor at the Department of Plant Physiology, is leading the project Elucidating the design principles of distal control in Rubisco catalysis, which has now been awarded 27 million over five years.
“The support of the project by the Wallenberg foundation is fantastic news! Exploring this largely uncharted territory of enzyme catalysis is important as the new understanding may contribute to improving enzymes such as rubisco and, thereby, help improving crop yields, which is required for feeding a growing world population and for adjusting crop plants to climate change.“
Ann-Kristin Bergström, Professor at Department of Ecology, Environment and Geoscience. Photo: Anders Jonsson
Ann-Kristin Bergström, Professor at Department of Ecology, Environment and Geoscience, is leading the project Arctic lake productivity transformed under climate change, which has now been awarded 26 million kronor over five years.
“I was absolutely delighted when I heard the news that our project had been awarded funding! I am really looking forward to carrying out this project with my collaborators and to supervising PhD students and postdocs. We need to gain a better understanding of how Arctic freshwater ecosystems are being altered by current and future climate change so that we can manage these valuable ecosystems for future generations.“
Magnus Andersson, Professor at the Department of Chemistry. Photo: Mattias Pettersson
Magnus Andersson, Professor at the Department of Chemistry, is leading the project Filming the hidden workings of life at the atomic scale, which has now been awarded 32 million over five years.
“It feels fantastic to be given this opportunity. It is a very ambitious project in which we are attempting to do something that, just a few years ago, would have been difficult to imagine: determining high-resolution structures of proteins just microseconds after a reaction has begun. If we succeed, it could give us a completely new way of investigating the function of proteins.” Instead of merely observing static structures, we want to be able to understand proteins as the molecular machines they actually are.”
Ryan Sponseller, Professor at the Department of Ecology, Environment and Geoscience. Photo: Simon Öhman Jönsson
Ryan Sponseller, Professor at the Department of Ecology, Environment and Geoscience, is leading the project Groundwater to the atmosphere: the impact of hydrological extremes on methane production and emissions, which has now been awarded 35 million over five years.
“We are very excited to receive this funding from the Wallenberg Foundation. In our view, this research targets an important puzzle, not just about the controls over methane emissions to the atmosphere, but also about how climate change variables, such as temperature and precipitation, might push groundwater environments in different directions in terms of microbial processes and greenhouse gas production. With this funding, we will be able to tackle these questions using a range of experimental, observational, and modeling approaches, with a research team that brings together a broad set of tools and perspectives.”
Further details about the research projects will be published both on umu.se and on the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation’s website, where information is already available on all 30 research projects receiving funding.
