The beamline ForMAX at MAX IV hosts its first industry experiment: a ground-breaking study on fibre-based sustainable food packaging performed by Tetra Pak and researchers at Chalmers University of Technology and the research centres Wallenberg Wood Science Center and FibRE.
By imitating the way fungi decompose wood, WWSC researchers at KTH have been able to make a new type of material in an energy-efficient process. The enzyme-based process both consumed less energy and gave a stronger resulting material, compared to similar chemical methods, the researchers reported.
Material researchers Magnus Jonsson and Klas Tybrandt WWSC members at Linköping University, have received the European Research Council Consolidation grants.
There is interest in using lignin for material applications due to its aromatic structures, and it is foreseen to substitute fossil-based aromatic precursors, but one big challenge is that the available technical lignins are heterogeneous and still poorly characterized. This is something that the new WWSC spin-off company Proligreen, founded by Prof. Martin Lawoko and his PhD student Maria Karlsson wants to change.
Mika Sipponen, Stockholm University, is awarded with the prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant for his research on using lignin as building block for recyclable materials.
Starting from January 2023, WWSC Academy will have a new management team as Anette Larsson, Lauren McKee and Igor Zozoulenko take over the lead. The research graduate school has since the start of WWSC been one of the backbones in the center, creating a common knowledge platform and network for the PhD students.
WWSC researchers have developed a new kind of wood-based degradable biocomposite with semi-structural strength. Unlike thermoplastic, the material can be degraded without harming the environment. The findings have been published in Nature Communications.
The beamline ForMAX at MAX IV, specially designed for advanced studies on materials from the forest, is now opening for experiments! Researchers from Wallenberg Wood Science Center are among the first to perform experiments at the beamline.
Tiina Nypelö, Associate professor at Chalmers and WWSC member, is starting a new position at the Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems, Aalto University.
Four minutes to present your research for an audience of high school students – that’s the premises for the research communication competition Researcher’s Grand Prix. WWSC researcher Tomas Rosén accepted the challenge in tough competition won the Stockholm edition. Now awaits the national final 1st of December.
WWSC researcher Francisco Vilaplana, Associate Professor at KTH, has been appointed as Head of Plant Structure and Health at Oatly Food Science. He will integrate his part-time appointments at both KTH and Oatly, in order to strengthen the research and collaboration towards sustainable and healthy plant-based food products and materials.
The week after Midsummer, WWSC hosted visits at KTH from the Austrian government and from the research management at Scania. Both visits included presentations, lab demos, and enthusiastic discussions on the possibilities for using forest raw materials to create material solutions for a sustainable future.
Wallenberg Wood Science Center is a research center with a focus on new materials from trees. The mission is to create knowledge and build competence that can form the basis for an innovative future value creation from forest raw material.
WWSC is a joint research center between KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Chalmers University of Technology and Linköping University. The base is a donation from Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. The industry is supporting WWSC via the national platform Treesearch.
