IceLab receives large grant for interdisciplinary research

The Swedish Research Council received 124 applications from all scientific disciplines. 15 were granted – including one from Umeå University.

“The panel, which consists of experts on this type of centre formations, was very impressed by the quality of the project proposals. A high proportion of the applications was of exceptionally high quality”, says Mattias Marklund of the Swedish Research Council who led the design of the grant.

The five-year grant is a major step forward for Integrated Science Lab, IceLab for short, which aims to create bridges between traditionally separate research areas, such as mathematics, physics, ecology, plant physiology and molecular biology.

“When we read about the call, we felt this was for us. We try to bring researchers together across disciplines and see great benefit in collaboration,” says Martin Rosvall, Professor of Physics and Director of IceLab.

Now we can elevate the projects to the next level.

While writing the application, the researchers at IceLab wanted to find and define what is common to their research. The answer was that they all model what happens to living systems under stress.

“For example, plants exposed to drought or bacteria in a new environment; how do they cope? Or an ecological system brought out of equilibrium, what is the response? Normally, plant biologists look at plants, molecular biologists look at bacteria and ecologists look at their systems. These are parallel worlds, but many mechanisms are common and we often use similar methods. IceLab is one of the few environments that integrates expertise in experiments, network models and process-based dynamic models, which we believe is a key to understanding complex systems,” says Martin Rosvall.

People working at Integrated Science Lab, IceLab.

ImageGabrielle Beans Picón

Today, IceLab is a physical environment where bachelor and master students, doctoral students, postdocs and assistant professors conduct research together. It also organises IceLab camps for young researchers, IceLab lunch pitches and hackathons to bring researchers together. After ten years of building up IceLab, Martin Rosvall and his colleagues are very happy to have the opportunity to realise their visions.

“We have many ideas. Some we have been able to try with funds we have received in the past, but now we can elevate the projects to the next level,” he says.