Read more about the ceremonial installation of new professors at SLU in 2009 in the booklet presenting the professors and their research (mainly in Swedish, but with summaries in English).
Brief introduction of the professors installed in Alnarp May 15, 2009, and their lectures.
Lena Ekelund Axelson: Horticultural products on its way to consumers
Lena Ekelund Axelson is a horticultural economist whose research concerns structure and competition in the horticultural sector. She has studied consumer aspects of marketing, with special focus on organic products. Her current research concerns the increasing market for plants and the marketing of fruit and vegetables within the supermarket trade.
Erik Steen Jensen: Sustainable management of natural resources in agriculture
Erik Steen Jensen is an agricultural scientist with special interest in environmental and resource issues and in development of a sustainable agriculture. His research concerns among other things nitrogen fixation, intercropping with non-legumes and legumes, and sustainable biomass and biofuel production from agricultural residues.
Beatrix Waechter Alsanius: Micro-organisms serve tomato growers
Beatrix Waechter Alsanius’ research concerns micro-organisms in horticultural systems. Certain bacteria have been proven capable of counteracting root disease in closed tomato production systems where nutrient solutions are reused rather than released into the lakes and coastal areas. These bacteria have even been showed to promote growth in tomatoes.
Brief introduction of the professors installed in Uppsala, and their lectures held on March 19-20, 2009.
Johan Arvidsson: Is tillage necessary?
Johan Arvidsson’s research mainly deals with soil compaction (effects of traffic by heavy machinery), and methods to reduce soil tillage. For example, he has shown how traffic by heavy sugarbeet harvesters compacts the subsoil, creating very persistent damage to soil structure. He has also studied the effects of different tillage systems on soil properties and processes, energy consumption and crop growth.
Christer Björkman: Why is the world green?
Christer Björkman investigates the interactions between plants and insects in several systems. One major goal is to understand the mechanisms behind insect outbreaks and to explore how changes in climate and land use affect the risk for outbreaks. Another goal is to provide knowledge that can be used to develop sustainable control methods of the insect pests by integrating biological control from natural enemies with resistant plants.
Torleif Härd: An Alzheimer vaccine?
Torleif Härd is a structural biologist whose research concerns the structure and function of molecules in living cells. He has studied receptors for steroid hormones and he and his research group are now interested in the ”misfolded” protein that is believed to cause Alzheimer’s disease. They use protein engineering in attempts to develop a vaccine against this disease.
Dan Funck Jensen: Fungi fighting plant diseases – unseen battles in bio-control
Dan Funck Jensen´s research area is plant pathology, with a focus on biological control of plant diseases. His main interest is microbial interactions in the root zone and their effects on soil and seed-borne diseases. He is known for his close cooperation with industry and he has had coordinating responsibilities in several Nordic and European research networks. His research is also relevant to developing countries, as demonstrated by his cooperative endeavours with countries in Central America, Asia and Africa.
Håkan Jönsson: Safe recycling of urban plant nutrients
Håkan Jönsson´s research is mainly focused on process and management questions in two areas: source separating sewage systems, including sanitation/hygienisation, and composting. Applications concern Swedish conditions as well as conditions in developing countries. Systems analysis is an important tool in his research.
Afaf Kamal-Eldin: An apple a day keeps the doctor away
Afaf Kamal-Eldin is a food scientist. She is performing research on bioactive components in foods and their importance for health. Her research, extending from basic chemistry to applied biology, involves much collaboration from fork-to-field.
Ulf Olsson: Is the normal distribution normal?
Ulf Olssons research area is statistical models for data that lacks “real” numerical values and are not normally distributed. By developing generalized linear mixed models he makes it possible to perform theoretically correct analyses of such data.
Jana Pickova: Fatty acids in cattle and fish
Jana Pickova’s research concerns lipid composition in feeds, its impact on metabolism in several animal species, and how it affects animal food products. Fatty acid composition is affected by the feed the animals are given, for example grain or roughage for the cattle. Fish metabolism can be influenced by bioactive substances to produce healthy polyunsaturated fatty acids, in spite of the fact that fish feed contains plant oils instead of fish oils.
Martin Schroeder: Bark beetles and severe storms
Martin Schroeder´s main research areas are bark beetle ecology and the conservation of insect diversity in managed boreal forests. His bark beetle research focuses on Ips typographus, the spruce bark beetle, which is an important forest pest that can reach outbreak levels after severe storms. The aim of this research is to determine the relative importance of different factors influencing the population dynamics of the species. Studied factors include host tree availability (e.g. amounts of wind-felled trees and old spruce forest) as well as natural enemies.
Ingvar Sundh: Safe micro-organisms to the benefit of environment and agriculture
Ingvar Sundh is a microbiologist with interest in topics regarding the role of some groups of micro-organisms in processes of global significance. One example is the bacteria that oxidise methane in wetlands and lakes, and thereby reduce emissions of this greenhouse gas to the atmosphere. Within the research programme Domestication of micro-organisms (DOM), he focuses on questions related to safety assessments and regulation of the use of beneficial micro-organisms within agriculture, environment, and food or feed production.
Jonathan Yuen: Sex habits of the fungi
Jonathan Yuen’s research centers on the epidemiology of plant diseases (i.e. the factors that determine their spread). Molecular methods have enabled the study of plant pathogen populations at a detailed level that was not possible earlier. Jonathan Yuen has used these methods to study late blight of potato, the plant disease that requires the most fungicides in Sweden. The pathogen is extremely diverse in Scandinavia, where it now reproduces sexually. Thus the already demanding control measures have become more demanding. The fungi that cause rust diseases (a disease already known by the Roman Threophrastus) can also be studied with molecular methods and the threats from these fungi grown, in part because of new races and in part because of an increased possibility for sexual reproduction.
Previous installations
Booklets from previous installations (in Swedish and partly in English):