NEWS UCMR Seminar Series aims to connect the microbial research environment in Umeå to the world and promote collaborations. A good concept according to professor Stefano Corni who visited Umeå through this programme and concludes “As any human being, researchers need informal, personal interactions to feel part of a community, that in turns helps one’s research to grow faster and healthier.”
Professor Stefano Corni and assistant professor Nicolò Maccaferri deeepen their collaboration through UCMR Seminar Series support.
ImageIngrid Söderberghmy impression is that the research performed at Umeå University is of world-class scientific level
“I am very grateful to Umeå Centre of Microbial Research, UCMR, for funding my short visit to Umeå and allowing me to connect with a new reality, since this is my first time in Sweden and I am happy with my experience,” says Stefano Corni, professor at the Department of Chemical Sciences at the University of Padova in Italy.
In late September, Nicolò Maccaferri and his research group had the pleasure to host Stefano Corni in the context of UCMR Seminar Series. Corni’s research is focusing on using the basic principles of chemistry and physics to model the properties of complicated systems involving molecules, nanostructures and light and he is already an important collaborator of Nicolò Maccaferri in the Pathfinder project ‘iSenseDNA’ funded by the European Innovation Council.
“Stefano Corni’s team is helping our group to model the experimental results that we obtain here. We use a homemade multidimentional spectroscopy setup to measure the dynamics of molecules at very short timescales and from this we extract structural information useful to understand their elementary functions,” says Nicolò Maccaferri, assistant professor and group leader of the Ultrafast Nanoscience Unit at the Department of Physics at Umeå University.
As a mandatory part of the UCMR Seminar Series programme, Stefano Corni gave a lecture. His talk covered multiscale modelling of molecules interacting with nanostructures, a topic at the intersection between chemistry and physics, partially connected to some other on-going projects in the Nicolò Maccaferri lab.
Furthermore, a lot of time was devoted to informal discussions about on-going experiments and projects and future new ideas involving researchers in different units.
“For instance, Stefano Corni has started a collaboration with Magnus Andersson lab at the Department of Physics, where the idea is to validate his theoretical models using Raman spectroscopy. Furthermore, Corni’s team can help us in modeling experiments we plan to do together with André Mateus lab at the Department of Chemistry,” says Nicolò Maccaferri.
PhD student Hinduja Bhuvanendran and ‘Excellence by Choice’ postdoctoral fellow Ben Johns are showing professor Stefano the experimental setup used in both the Pathfinder project ‘iSenseDNA’ and the UCMR postdoctoral project funded by Kempestiftelserna.
Image[Nicolò Maccaferri]Corni’s expertise is also complementary to that of Ludvig Lizana, who is co-supervisor to postdoctoral fellow Ben Johns together with André Mateus (co-supervisor) and Nicolò Maccaferri (main supervisor). This additional collaboration will strengthen the Umeå University team in performing a challenging interdisciplinary research project within the ‘Excellence by Choice’ postdoctoral fellow programme in life science.
Stefano Corni thinks that the highlight of his stay was meeting researchers that were so enthusiastic about their work and visiting their labs.
“I was particularly impressed by the strong research in materials science and photonics carried out at the Department of Physics, funded by prestigious grants such as the European Research Council and Knut och Alice Wallenbergs Stiftelse (KAW). Even though I was here only for a short time, my impression is that the research performed at Umeå University is of world-class scientific level. I have a strong feeling that Umeå University is a pleasant place to study at and to do research in an open and collaborative manner.”
PhD student Mouna Rafei is explaining to professor Stefano Corni how they make nanomaterials using chemical synthesis techniques.
ImageNicolò maccaferri