I am director of the Swedish Metabolomics Center, SMC, and I do research on new technologies for measuring small molecules in biological systems with applications in both medicine and plant biology.
I lead a research group that develops new ways to be able to study biochemical processes in the form of small molecules in different biological systems. We use mass spectrometry to both identify and quantify metabolites such as amino acids, sugars, fats and nucleotides. These data are pieces of the great puzzle of living cells or organisms. Together with other biochemical information on proteins and genes, the information on metabolites can help to explain various developmental biological or pathological processes.
I defended my dissertation in 2004 in plant biology at SLU where we studied biosynthesis of plant hormones. Since then, I have used mass spectrometry as a research tool in metabolomics at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego and at Karolinska Institutet before I came to Umeå University in 2011.