The Novo Nordisk Foundation have awarded a total of DKK 15 million to six researchers from the faculty. The objective of the grants is to support basic research at the highest international level.

The need for energy storage is increasing, but with the present technology, there are not enough resources to produce the necessary batteries. On November 16, 2022, industry and academia came together to discuss challenges in connection with battery materials and their recycling at the 8th Brainnovation Day at Aarhus University.

Independent Research Fund Denmark has granted a total of approx. DKK 8.6 million to three researchers from the Department of Biology, the Department of Chemistry, and the Department of Physics and Astronomy. The grants are part of the Inge Lehmann programme, the purpose of which is to promote gender equality in Danish research.

Independent Research Fund Denmark has granted DKK 2.9 million to research into how to prevent cooling systems from exacerbating global warming.

Assistant Professor Alonso Rosas-Hernández is the first researcher to receive a Junior Group Leader grant from the Novo Nordisk Foundation CO₂ Research Center (CORC), which is a four-year grant awarded for research that supplements ongoing research in the center. The project focuses on methane - another very potent greenhouse gas that we need to curb - and aims to develop novel hybrid catalysts to promote the electroconversion of methane to methanol to counteract methane accumulation in the atmosphere.

The Danish Chemical Society and Aksel Tovborg Jensen's Grant are hosting the Bjerrum-Brønsted-Lang Lecture in Copenhagen on 23 September at 3 pm. Professor Troels Skrydstrup is this year's lecturer.

Last week, the International Commission on Atmospheric Chemistry and Global Pollution (iCACGP) awarded Postdoc Sarah S. Petters the Paul J. Crutzen Award for Early Career Scientists 2022.

With a grant of DKK 15 million from the Novo Nordisk Foundation Thomas Vosegaard (Professor and iNANO Director) and co-applicants will be able to upgrade Northern Europe’s most powerful NMR instrument, and the existing hardware will be reused for a sustainable upgrade of other in-house NMR instruments. Additionally, the grant makes it possible to waive a number of external user access fees to the facilities.

Professor Merete Bilde has been elected as a new member of The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters.

Prof. Niels Christian Nielsen and Prof. Henrik Birkedal from Department of Chemistry and iNANO each receive a Villum Synergy grant for their data-driven interdisciplinary research projects. Their research projects are based on data science within optimizing sensitivity in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and improving the analysis of 3D imaging data, respectively.

Associate Professor Tobias Weidner receives a VILLUM Experiment grant of 1,984,626 DKK (approx. $265,500).

Professor Jan Skov Pedersen receives an honorary doctorate at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at the University of Oslo. The honorary title will be awarded at the university’s annual celebration.

Nature knows how to activate and deactivate enzymes on demand, without wasteful protein synthesis and degradation. Surprisingly, methods to do so using tools of chemistry are few. PhD candidate Mireia Casanovas Montasell, Prof. Alexander N. Zelikin and colleagues address this challenge in their new publication, published in Nature Communications.

Researchers at Aarhus University have developed a new and inexpensive way of breaking down polyurethane (PU) plastic into its original components, which can be recycled into new PU material instead of ending up as landfill or in an incinerator.

Geckos are an interesting species. They climb walls and ceilings and do not seem to have any problems with it. But how can that be? PhD Mette Heidemann Rasmussen, Associate Professor Tobias Weidner and their colleagues might have come a bit closer to an answer with their new article in Biology Letters.

H.C. Ørsted Selskabet has granted this year's research award of DKK 50,000 to Professor Dorthe Ravnsbæk from the Department of Chemistry, while the two research talent awards of DKK 10,000 each went to Johannes Lund Jensen and Cecilie Hermansen; both postdocs at the Department of Agroecology.

The development of new types of drugs based on DNA and RNA is happening at a rapid pace. The mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 are just one of many examples of DNA-based drugs on the market. Many are on the way, but the production of the necessary DNA is costly. A research group at Aarhus University has now found an effective and inexpensive method for producing stable DNA sequences attached to chemical groups that e.g., ensures that the drugs are directed into the right cells.

Researchers from ETH Zürich, Aarhus University (AU) and École Normale Supérieure (ENS) Paris have demonstrated that combination of clever pulse sequence engineering and state-of-the-art instrumentation paves the way for pulsed dynamic nuclear polarisation (DNP) experiments improving sensitivity and broadband performance in DNP-enhanced nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR).

Professor Niels Christian Nielsen and Associate Professor Tobias Weidner have each received 10,000,000 DKK (approx. $1.400.000) from the Novo Nordisk Foundation.

Professor Torben R. Jensen and his research group publishes new, exciting results regarding lithium batteries in Angewandte Chemie.

Cloud formation and what actually happens inside clouds is one of the great mysteries in climate research. The solution to the mystery can be extremely important for climate research, and now a new basic research centre at Aarhus University will find answers by looking closely at clouds.

On 27 January 2022, the position of centre director at iNANO was advertised and could be applied for until 9 March. Acting Centre Director Thomas Vosegaard applied for the position and is appointed new centre director as of 1 June 2022.

Niels Kristian Kjærgård Madsen from the Department of Chemistry receives AUFF's PhD prize, DKK 50,000, for his development of quantum chemistry methods.

Corona prevented chemistry professor Anja-Verena Mudring from using the travel budget from her VILLUM Investigator grant. Now she is instead using the money to pay for a young chemist refugee from Ukraine.

The field of charge density research has evolved tremendously in the last decades, becoming a cornerstone of a field of broader scope – Quantum Crystallography. The ICDM9 will be a vibrant meeting with new themes and interfaces to other fields of science, and at the same time holding on to the core of the field.

Yesterday, Anna Duncan started her new position as assistant professor (tenure track) at the Department of Chemistry.

On Saturday 28 May, Professor Merete Bilde will speak at Bloom Festival in Copenhagen - a festival about nature and science.

HydEM 2022 is a great point of reference for scientists of energy materials science, and the focus is on new hydrogen-containing materials for fuel cells, batteries, hydrogen storage, and conversion of CO2 into fuel. Torben R. Jensen is part of the conference organizers at HydEM 2022, and the Université Catholique de Louvain is a partner with the European University Alliance Circle U.

Most drugs used today have only one mechanism of action and it is both difficult and expensive to manufacture drugs with multiple functions. Researchers at the NNF-funded research center, CEMBID, at Aarhus University have recently found a way to create more stable nanostructures that can assemble biomolecules with different functions, which in combination e.g., can provide more effective cancer medicine.

The Novo Nordisk Foundation ​​​​​​​CO2 Research Center (CORC) invites staff and students at AU for an introduction of the center and its crucial mission to mitigate climate change. The center focuses greatly on collaboration and with the event it aims at creating a strong basis for the exchange of innovative ideas.

Assistant Professor Jonas Elm receives award for his research in cluster formation and atmospheric chemistry.

We are delighted to present Katrine Mikkelsen as the new head of secretariat at the Department of Chemistry.

Global goals in sustainability and efficiency have evolved over the years such that even nanostructure manufacturing must be greener and better. That has led Professor Anja-Verena Mudring and Postdoc Oliver Hammond to review how ionic liquids and deep eutectic solvents can be used to solve these sustainability and efficiency issues.

Assistant Professor Maarten Goesten, Assistant Professor Shuai Wei and Postdoc Bernadette Rosati each receive a Young Investigator grant of approximately 6 million Danish Kroner from the Villum Foundation.

Despite recent progress in predicting protein and RNA structure, we are still far from being able to design biomolecular structures that rival the complexity found in Nature. A new consortium, COFOLD, funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation, aims to elucidate the rules of RNA folding in order to design RNA molecules for applications in medicine and synthetic biology.

Innovation Fund Denmark funds collaboration between the ROCKWOOL Group and Associate Professor Marianne Glasius' research group on industrial postdoc position.

Assistant Professor Jonas Elm receives €1,500,000 from the EU's European Research Council.