Category: Person
Velkomen Kristoffer!
Kristoffer Herdlevær has accepted a position as research fellow / PhD candidate at our department and will conduct research toward «Utilization of woody biomass and residues for production of energy products and high-value natural compounds.» This project addresses basic research challenges in the different steps of biomass treatment and use to provide a validated basis for developing a lignocellulosic woody biomass biorefinery that is suitable for the conditions specific to Western Norway. This is a strategic and interdisciplinary PhD project within the UiB priority research area Climate and energy transition. 
Velkomen tilbake, Ludvik!
Ludvik Espeland has joined the Department of Chemistry as PhD-student in organic synthesis and drug chemistry. He is funded by UiB's strategic program on global societal challenges.
Ludvik holds a master's degree in chemistry from UiB (2019). 
He will work on the project "Inhibitors of bacterial fatty acid synthesis" where the goal is to identify inhibitors of the enzyme FabF, which is an important enzyme in the fatty acid metabolism of bacteria and thus can form the basis for development of new antibiotics. Ludvik will be supervised by Bengt Erik Haug, Jarl Underhaug and Ruth Brenk (Department of Biomedicine).
Welcome Lakshmi!
Lakshmi Suresh recently joined our department as a PhD student. She will be working with Assoc. Prof. Erwan Le Roux on organometallics and catalysis with a strong emphasis on tailor-made catalysts for the copolymerization of epoxides with CO2. She completed her integrated MSc in Chemistry from Pondicherry University (India) in 2019, and was awarded a scholarship for «Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research» (INSPIRE) conferred by the Government of India from 2014 to 2019. She also was a research intern at Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST) in 2017.
Dr Wietse!
A very sharp-looking Wietse Smit successfully defended his thesis Phosphine- and Indenylidene-Based Z-Selective Ruthenium Olefin Metathesis Catalysts and Catalyst Stability: Decomposition, Olefin Isomerization and Regeneration last Friday. Sincere and impressed gratulations!
Congrats Dr. Malgorzata!
Last Friday, Malgorzata Anna Wisniewska-Dale successfully and confidently defended her thesis «Characterizing mass transport in hydrogels using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance» for the degree of ph.d. In this project, the freshly minted doctora has focused on structural aspects of hydrogels and how to characterize these experimentally, with potential applications to technologies for controlled release of pharmaceutical compounds.
En helt ny klasse av aktive plantestoffer er oppdaget
I samarbeid med genforskere på New Zealand har Helge Berland, Monika Jordheim og Øyvind M. Andersen på Kjemisk instituttt ved UiB funnet en helt ny klasse av flavonoider. Dette er forbindelser som gir farge til bær og blomster og beskytter planter mot ulike former for stress. Så langt har forskere kartlagt rundt 9000 flavonoider fordelt på ti ulike klasser. Nå ser det ut til at det må føyes til en ellevte: auronidinene. De nye resultatene kan bety at utviklingshistorien for plantenes kjemiske forsvarssystemer må skrives om. Les om dette i populær versjon på uib.no eller i PNAS!
FARGESTOFF: Øyvind M. Andersen (t.v) og Helge Berland foran et tre i kirsebærslekten. Mens det er antocyaner som står bak de røde fargene i de fleste planter, var det trolig auronidiner som hadde denne funksjonen i de første landplantene for 450 millioner år siden. Foto: Jens Helleland Ådnanes, UiB.
Welcome Nicolai!
Nicolai Alsaker has recently joined the department as a PhD student working with Willy Nerdal, Bengt Erik Haug and Nathalie Reuter on the FriMedBio-funded PePrMInt project. During the PhD project he will use solid state NMR to study the interaction between lipid membranes and model polypeptides in order to better understand the peripheral membrane protein interactome.
He holds a BSc and MSc in organic chemistry from NTNU, during which he worked with NMR structural characterization and total synthesis targeted towards natural products. He also spent some time working at GE Healthcare developing a synthetic route for new contrast medium.
VISit on Thursday
Lars and Victoria from VIS will be at our department this Thursday, from 12-15! If you want to talk about how your research can be made into a product or a service, or about how VIS can help you with your applications, don’t hesitate to get in touch. Suggestion: grab hold of them after TCLS!
Welcome Pushpak!
Pushpak Mizar has recently joined the department as a postdoctoral researcher working with Nathalie Reuter and Bengt Erik Haug on the BIOTEK2021/Digital Life Norway-funded RESPOND3 project. 
He holds a master’s degree in chemistry and a PhD within organic synthesis from the North–Eastern Hill University, Shillong, India. After completing his PhD, he held various position at JNCASR Bangalore, India, Cardiff University in Wales as Marie Curie international incoming fellow, University of Antwerp, Belgium and as a Wellcome Trust Fellow in chemical biology at the University of Southampton, UK.
Welcome Nina!
Nina Henne recently joined the department as a PhD student working with Bengt Erik Haug. She has both a bachelor- and a master degree from the University of Bergen and has for the past four years worked as an engineer at the Core Facility for Metabolomics at the Department of Clinical Science at UiB. In her PhD project, which is funded through the Centre for Pharmacy at UiB, she will work on the development of inhibitors of a class of enzymes denoted N-terminal acetyltransferases. The PhD-project is part of an on-going collaboration between the Haug group and professor Thomas Arnesen at the Department of Biomedicine at UiB.