Researchers from the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Aarhus University take part in an international research network, ENSA, which focuses on improving nutrient uptake by plants to reduce the need for fertilizer. The network has just received a total grant of USD 35 million from Bill & Melinda Gates Agricultural Innovations program, of which Aarhus University receives USD 4 million.

Researchers from Aarhus University have now discovered the receptor complex crucial for initiating symbiotic signaling in legume plants that engage in symbiosis with nitrogen-fixing bacteria. In the study published in Science, the researchers describe a novel technique using nanobodies to investigate and activate receptor complexes.

In an area plagued by periods of drought, it is difficult to understand how the great ancient city of Great Zimbabwe thrived for centuries, but the answer to that has now been found.

A group of teachers at the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Aarhus University has joined forces with former students to develop the teaching of structural biology. The result is a whole new way of teaching computer skills, and it has been well received by new students.

Independent Research Fund Denmark has awarded a total of DKK 247 million to 41 research leaders. Three of the young, talented researchers work at the Faculty of Natural Sciences, and their research projects have now received a significant boost.

The ostrich is an obvious model for investigating how large animals are affected by the large fluctuations in temperatures we will experience in the future. This is what postdoc Mads Fristrup Schou thinks. He has received an ERC Starting Grant of €1.5 million, and next year he will set up a new research group at the Department of Biology at Aarhus University.

Saving energy requires planning. Experiments have to be timed to be completed within normal working hours. It's more of a hassle than before, but for Rasmus Kock Flygaard from the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, the challenges can be solved with better planning.

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.

Researchers have received support from the Danish Cancer Society’s programme Knæk Cancer for a research project that will lead to better immunotherapy with fewer side effects. The project is based on engineering work among the body's smallest building blocks.

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.

The new collaborative platform, Plant2Food, will speed up the development of plant-based foods. On Plant2Food, researchers and companies will work together to explore complex issues within plant and food science and share new knowledge across sectors – without patenting the results. The Novo Nordisk Foundation will support the platform with up to DKK 200 million over the next five years.

Defects in the cell's cilia are the cause of many different diseases. Therefore, there is a great focus on identifying the function of cilia, so that drugs can be developed against these diseases. A research team has now taken another step towards this, as they have uncovered the structure of the IFT-B complex, which is crucial for the formation of cilium organelles.

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

Despite numerous trials in the past decade prostate tumors have so far resisted treatment with immunotherapy. Now iNANO and Aarhus University Hospital researchers join forces to move prostate cancer immunotherapies closer to the clinic by using Albumin-fused T-cell engagers as a potential immunotherapy tailored to selected prostate cancer patients.

Global warming can have alarming consequences for ectotherms (commonly known as cold-blooded animals) across the globe, both on land and in water. Future heatwaves and extreme temperatures will become even hotter, and a new study shows that the rate at which heat injury in ectothermic animals doubles for each degree the temperature rises.

Danish researchers have determined the three-dimensional structure of the proteolytic enzyme PAPP-A. The results may allow us to better understand the basic biology that regulates linear growth of vertebrates. The same regulatory mechanisms are also involved in several age-related diseases, and thus, the research is an important step towards the development of novel types of drugs.

An international team of astronomers has created color images and animations of five years of light echoes from a supernova in the Centaurus A galaxy.

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.

Synthetic biology strives to achieve robust control of biological processes in order to create designer organisms for a variety of industrial, diagnostic, and therapeutic applications. Researchers at the iNANO center of Aarhus University have developed RNA origami sponges and CRISPR-based regulators for advanced genetic control of enzymatic pathways in microorganisms to improve production of valuable biochemicals.

This year, researchers from the department are organizing four sessions at the Digital Tech Summit. Ira, Bas, Eve, and Ken will each chair a session about their current research in the four categories: Foodtech and aggrotech, Cyber security, trust and fintech, Digital talents – skills of tomorrow, and Technological megatrends and emerging technologies. Each session will include a scientific and business perspective on the topic in question. We look forward to the newest on regulatory compliant blockchain systems, the future of hybrid work, eyes as an interface concept, and how digitalization is transforming modern agriculture.

Title: Around the World in 13 Hours, by Shaeema Zaman at Science Melting Pot.

For the second year in a row, student course and study group result in a paper in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The Viking Age beadmakers were more advanced than previously believed. A research group from i.a. Aarhus University reveals that the ancient craftsmen in the earliest Viking Age around the year 700 used sophisticated and sustainable methods when they gave old Roman glass mosaics new life as glass beads.

Mathias Løkkegaard Laursen has won Danish Mathematical Society's Master’s thesis prize for 2021. A prize awarded each year to the best mathematics Master's thesis at Danish universities.

With the programme "Molecules to Ecosystems", Europe's leading life science research laboratory EMBL aims to link traditional molecular biology research to global agendas on climate, biodiversity and ecosystems. For the programme to be successful, it is necessary to get researchers from different professional disciplines to work together. The programme and its significance for Danish research will be presented at a symposium at Aarhus University in Denmark on 3-4 November 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.

A new project will digitize environmental measurements of chemicals and nutrients in real time. This makes it possible to limit environmental disasters, for example when pesticides are released from a factory.

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.

Congratulations to Assistant Professor Ugo Marzocchi who received a grant of DKK 2 Mio. to investigate the influence of electric fields on the movement of ions in aquatic sediments.

Airborne DNA falls to the earth's surface, where it blends with existing DNA deposits from the area's animals and plants. New research emphasizes the need for ongoing control and separation of airborne DNA when collecting environmental DNA samples. Furthermore, the discovery calls for new methods for nature monitoring.

A British company has made its commercial facilities available to Danish plant molecular biologists so that they can make a large-scale study of elite rhizobial strains using state-of-the art equipment to evaluate the suitability of these strains as future inoculants for high-protein faba bean plants.

There may well be important research breakthroughs in what we previously thought of as a dead end. The Villum Experiment programme has encouraged technical and natural science research projects that challenge norms and could potentially change the way we approach important topics. Funding has just been awarded, and seven researchers at the Faculty of Natural Sciences (Nat), will receive a total of almost DKK 14 million.

Thomas Lykke Rasmussen and Mads Emil Marker Jungersen study Data Science at the Department of Mathematics. On 4-9 September they will both participate in the congress EMS2022 (European Meteorological Society) to be held on the Poppelsdorf Campus of the University of Bonn in Germany. Here, they have just presented their bachelor project "Cloud Cover Nowcasting with Deep Learning", which has attracted much interest.

Sebastian Loeschcke, master's student in computer science, from the Department of Computer Science receives Queen Margrethe II's travel grant, which gives him the opportunity to travel to Tel Aviv to present his new scientific article at an international conference on computer vision and machine learning.

The PATTERN Consortium, which consists of 19 partners, including the Centre for Science Studies at the Department of Mathematics, wins Horizon Europe grant.

Danish researchers have developed a new and faster technology that might pave the way for non-invasive and very early diagnosis of a wide variety of human diseases, which will enable more successful treatments.

Over the next three days, the new batch of students will take over campus as they begin their academic journey at Aarhus University.

New tools for root analysis can transform the European agricultural landscape to provide food security and climate change adaptation and mitigation. A network of 22 partners based in Europe and Africa has received a grant of EUR 6,4 to develop new plant varieties adapted to future climate change.

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.

The Thai Office of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation has just awarded a prestigious award to Professor Henrik Balslev for his years of research into the Thai flora. The prize, called the "Friend of Thai Science Award", was presented by the Thai ambassador at the Thai embassy in Copenhagen on 26 July 2022. The presentation was followed by an official visit by the Ambassador to the Herbarium at Aarhus University, where Henrik Balslev carries out his research activities and where you can find, among other things, his extensive collection of plants from Thailand.

Congratulations to postdocs Andrew Abraham and Julia Otte. They each received EU funding for their research projects.

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.

Admissions to Bachelor's programmes at the Faculty of Natural Sciences are back to pre-corona levels. The faculty is also pleased to see growth in admissions to IT degree programmes.

Researchers from Aarhus and Berlin have developed a new algorithm that can teach computers to predict how complex molecules will bind to the surface of catalysts. This is important when you have to produce synthetic fuels, for example. And it’s almost like playing extreme Tetris.

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.

The purpose of the NERD programme is to support original basic research within the natural and technical sciences. The four researchers receive a total of DKK 47,7 mio.

Associate Professor Simona Radutoiu from the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics has joined distinguished company, as she has been elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), which admits exceptional researchers in life sciences.

The quota 1 applications to higher education degree programmes in Denmark have been counted, and despite a general tendency towards fewer applications to the Faculty of Natural Sciences, the faculty’s IT degree programmes have reason to celebrate: More applicants had IT degree programmes as their first priority this year.

It has been known since 1926, that the growth and development of plants is controlled by a hormone group called auxin, but only now is it revealed how auxin is transported around the plants by the so-called PIN proteins. Researchers from Aarhus University and Technical University of Munich have published their study of the molecular mechanism behind auxin transport in Nature.

The world's oceans are filling with plastic, and the global community cannot keep up with production and break down the large amount of plastic produced every year. We must find a solution, says Professor Daniel Otzen. With DKK 57 million from the Novo Nordisk Foundation’s Challenge Programme, he can now open a centre for plastic research at Aarhus University.

PhD students from the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Aarhus University, who have participated in international conferences in Germany and Greece, have chosen to take the train for environmental reasons, even though it resulted in a significantly longer travel time.

Enzymes fit their substrates snugly to be specific - yet should not get trapped after they have done their deed. Therefore, enzymes bind their partners with intermediate strength to “kiss-and-run”. Researchers at Aarhus University have developed equations that predict the optimal binding strength for enzyme docking interactions.

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 Center of Excellence at Aarhus University will find answers by looking closely at clouds.

Warmer temperatures, increased globalisation and more people are putting pressure on Earth's biodiversity and ecosystems. This means that many of the planet's species are threatened by extinction, and ecosystems are at risk of collapsing. Future generations will also experience extreme climate change and living conditions. A new centre at Aarhus University will now prevent things from going that badly.

The International Biogeography Society has selected Professor Jens-Christian Svenning from the Department of Biology a Distinguished Fellow. He was presented with the award on June 5 at the association's conference in Vancouver.

As the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics (MBG) is the first department to move into the University City, it was decided that Queen Margrethe II should visit the department to see how a hospital after three years of renovation has been transformed into a department with teaching and research laboratories.

The Danish National Research Foundation, the Carlsberg Foundation, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, the Lundbeck Foundation and the VILLUM Foundation will, together with top researcher Klaus Butterbach-Bahl, establish a pioneering research center called the Pioneer Center for Landscape Research in Sustainable Agricultural Futures (Land-CRAFT).

Professor of astrophysics Jørgen Christensen-Dalsgaard from Aarhus University will be the first Dane to receive the Norwegian Kavli Prize for outstanding scientific research. The prize is one million dollars. He will share the prize with two other researchers within the same field of research: asteroseismology. One of them is also affiliated with Aarhus University as an honorary doctor.

Joanna M. Davies and Adrián López Quirós have received research grants from iCLIMATE

Pollen isn’t - atishoo! – just pollen. Some grasses are bad news for allergy sufferers, while others are completely harmless. Aarhus University has appointed one of the world's leading researchers in air-borne allergens, Carsten Ambelas Skjøth, to sequence pollen DNA and make real-time pollen counts to make life better for pollen-allergy sufferers.

Thomas Vosegaard has been appointed as the new centre director from 1 June 2022

Biology Professor Signe Normand has received the Victor Albeck Award of DKK 100,000 for her innovative and ground-breaking research on climate change and nature conservation.

Researchers from Aarhus University have developed the browser extension Consent-O-Matic – a piece of software that automatically answers consent pop-ups for you. Experience shows that the time users spend responding to virtually the same consent pop-ups on different websites - every day - is drastically reduced with Consent-O-Matic installed. The browser extension already has 22,000 test users around the world, and now the browser extension is made publicly available for all interested users, and the developers expects a massive growth in number of Consent-O-Matic users.

Niels Kristian Kjærgård Madsen from the Department of Chemistry receives AUFF's PhD prize, DKK 50.000, for his development of quantum chemistry methods

Rasmus Andreasen is co-author in a new article in Nature Astronomy: "The dissipation of the solar nebula constrained by impacts and core cooling in planetesimals"

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.

Through hard work and team effort, one man's seminal vision twenty years ago became the first interdisciplinary research centre at Aarhus University in 2002: iNANO. Twenty years later, the centre has paved the way for a rapidly developing discipline, and interdisciplinary collaboration that has spread throughout the world.

”Climate research in Northeast Greenland (KLANG)”

Fuel from liquid hydrocarbons as we know them, but made completely without the use of fossil resources. This is the goal of a new project partnered by AU researcher, in which the Innovation Fund has just invested DKK 26.7 million.

Azadeh Shahsavar, who is assistant professor in Professor Poul Nissen's group at the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Aarhus University, has received a grant to do research at the University of Copenhagen, where she will study the structure and function of proteins that transport glycine and glutamine in the brain.

Xavier Bofill De Ros is one of the seven talented researchers who will become a Lundbeckfonden fellow in 2022. And the grant that comes with the appointment enables him to establish his own research group and devote himself to research for the next five years at the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics (MBG).

The European Research Council has granted Professor Mikkel Heide Schierup from the Bioinformatics Research Centre at Aarhus University EUR 2.5 million for his research into how X and Y chromosomes make primates form new species.

Astrophysicist Jørgen Christensen-Dalsgaard from Aarhus University has become a member of the exclusive and highly esteemed American scientific society, the National Academy of Sciences. This means the academy now has two members from AU, as Bo Barker Jørgensen, a microbiologist, was admitted in 2020.

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.

AU researcher, Associate Professor Brigitte Stadler, and an intercontinental team of researchers, have received a prestigious international grant to study how important parts of the cell, the nucleus and mitochondria, communicate.

ODIN has reserved DKK 23.9 million for six new research projects that will pave the way for new drugs to treat a wide range of medical conditions – e.g. Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia, diabetes, renal diseases and cancer.

A group of PhD students from the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics has set out to make their department even greener. They have therefore set up a committee called greenMBG, which will come up with proposals for initiatives needed to realise their goals.

Denmark is phasing in a new digital ID system, known as MitID. A student and several researchers from the Department of Computer Science at Aarhus University have carried out an analysis of the new system based on the information that is publicly available. The conclusion is that MitID in many ways is better organized and more secure than NemID, which it replaces.

Isabella Nymann Westensee from iNANO and Simon Vendelbo Bylling Jensen from the Department of Physics and Astronomy each receive DKK 200,000, which they will use for research in resp. London and Hamburg.

Kasper Green Larsen is 35 years old and a newly appointed professor at the Department of Computer Science - that makes him one of the youngest professors at Aarhus University. But despite his young age, Kasper Green Larsen has an impressive array of groundbreaking research results and awards behind him and is passionate about making his mark on a field that is more needed than ever.

Exceptionally promising. This is how an Arctic top researcher describes a probe that three engineer students have developed during a bachelor's project in collaboration with the Department of Mechanics and Production and the Department of Biology at Aarhus University. In autumn 2021, the probe passed the ultimate test under extreme Arctic conditions.

With data from Aarhus University, among other places, more than 140 researchers from all over the world have calculated that there must be some 73,300 tree species on Earth, of which around 9,200 are as yet undiscovered. This is 14 per cent higher than previously assumed. The study also suggests that almost one-third of the species are rare.

With a grant of DKK 50 M in the form of a Laureate Research Grant from the Novo Nordisk Foundation, Professor Daan von Aalten moves his research group from the University of Dundee to the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, AU, where he has been appointed professor and will be housed in the brand new laboratories in the University City from 1 June 2022.

It was surprising in itself when an international team of researchers from AU and elsewhere discovered communities of microorganisms thriving at temperatures of up to 120°C in the ocean depths off Japan. Now the researchers have an equally surprising idea of how the tiny creatures do it.

Good news for innovative researchers: Working together with the Novo Nordisk Foundation, the five largest universities in Denmark are bringing the successful international SPARK programme to Denmark. The programme offers life science researchers expert knowledge and start-up capital, and readies them to commercialise their research ideas.

The VILLUM FOUNDATION has selected this year's 16 research talents to be part of the Villum Young Investigator programme. Six of this year's researchers are from Natural Sciences.

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.

Around half of the world’s plant species rely on animals to spread their seeds. A new international study has shown that, as a consequence of the biodiversity loss of birds and mammals, these plants’ ability to adapt to climate change has fallen by 60%.

Assistant Professor Jonas Elm (Chemistry) and the upcoming group leader of DANDRITE, Postdoc Taro Kitazawa, will each receive approx. DKK 11 million from the European Research Council, which has just awarded the prestigious Starting Grants for ground-breaking international research projects.