Three new faculty – arriving from DTU Nanotech – will strengthen both of the two major research sections at DTU Chemistry.
Nanotechnology is often an integral part of development and understanding of new materials and devices. Therefore, it is a clear strengthening of DTU Chemistry that Associate Professor Mogens Havsteen Jakobsen, Senior scientist Sokol Ndoni, and Professor Kristoffer Almdal is now a part of the Department’s faculty. First mentioned has joined the research section ‘Organic and Inorganic Chemistry’, while the two other researchers have joined the section ‘Physical and Biophysical Chemistry’.
Associate Professor Mogens Havsteen Jakobsen has worked with development of innovative sensor technologies within environmental, biomedical, and security applications. He has participated in several project related to the protection of the environment and two relevant security related projects, one FP7 project as coordinator, in close collaboration with academia, public bodies, industry, SMEs, LEAs and end-users. Furthermore, he has participated in the development of functional nano-composite materials for water treatment applications and environmental monitoring.
In 2018, Mogens Havsteen Jakobsen featured in a news report on Reuters UK about an innovative ‘sniffer system’, CRIMTRACK, he and his team invented: Watch clip
Mogens Havsteen Jakobsen is looking forward meeting more students with a background in Chemistry.
“I’ve enjoyed the last three semesters as a guest teacher where I had the opportunity to teach experimental chemistry in the new student laboratories at the Department of Chemistry. I have met students with both ability and enthusiasm to learn the tricks and trade of experimental chemistry. I look forward to continue to teach experimental chemistry, now as a faculty member,” says Mogens Havsteen Jakobsen.
He also points out that he is excited about forming a closer collaboration with the NMR Center:
“During a master project, in collaboration with Coloplast, I had the opportunity to discover the possibilities using the advanced instrumentation, expertise, and methods available in the NMR Center. I am looking forward to use the NMR Center in the future, now being part of the Department of Chemistry”.
Senior scientist Sokol Ndoni is founder of the research activity and collaboration on nanoporous polymers at DTU Nanotech. He has extensive research experience in the field of self-organizing synthetic and biological macromolecules in solution, bulk and thin film regimes. Among focus areas are block copolymer nanolithography, chromatography of polymer solutions, micelle-forming block copolymers, synthesis and dynamics of model polymer melts and networks, and polysaccharide physical gels. He also has extensive international research and educational experience in both academic and industrial environments.
Professor Kristoffer Almdal is interested in the polymers as a class of materials. From a fundamental perspective, subjects such as development of polymer synthesis methods, the physics of polymer melts and solutions, and especially self-organization phenomena. From a more applied aspect, he does research on functional polymeric nanoparticles and sensors, polymeric biomaterials, polymer degradation, adhesion, and interfaces in polymer composites. The primary experimental methods used are rheology, small angle scattering, size exclusion chromatography, and optical and electron microscopy.
“All through my career I’ve been in different multidisciplinary research units. As a chemist, I am excited now to be in a – first and foremost – chemist environment. I’m already collaborating with some of the other faculty, and look forward to even more collaborations,” says Professor Kristoffer Almdal.
One of Kristoffer Almdal’s current research projects is to test different polymer architectures by looking closer at the polymer chains, and see what happens when they are stretched. Read more about the work in this article.