Umeå University hosted SciLifeLab Leadership for a Full-Day tour of Local Facilities

The new director for SciLifeLab, Jan Ellenberg, and SciLifeLab board chair Ylva Engström, visited Umeå for a full-day tour of infrastructures and meetings with members. Seen here with Tobias Sparrman, Jurgen Schleucher and Gerhard Gröbner in the NMR Core facility. 

ImageRebecca Forsberg

The staff is key in running the infrastructures for the greater good of life science research

SciLifeLab, a national wide resource of sophisticated technologies and expertise available to researchers in life science, has since 2022 expanded with several local sites in Sweden, including Umeå.  By connecting the already existing cutting-edge infrastructures at Umeå with the national network, our community of researchers in areas such as biomedicine, ecology and evolution expands. 
 
As of this summer, SciLifeLab has a new director, Jan Ellenberg, who visited the site in Umeå for a full day of activities. The site director Linda Sandblad, Associate Professor at the Department of Chemistry and director of Umeå Center for Electron Microscopy (UCEM), kicked the day off with an introduction of SciLifeLab in Umeå, highlighting the strengths of the infrastructures being integrated with two universities, Umeå University and SLU, as well as Region Västerbotten through University Hospital of Umeå (Norrlands Universitetssjukhus, NUS).  

“Meeting Jan Ellenberg on site in Umeå was important for us. Jan’s experience of international research infrastructure development for life science is valuable for the continued development here in Umeå. Now, when he knows both staff scientists and our facilities, we can work more effectively together”, says Linda Sandblad. 

Tobias Sparrman and Jurgen Schleucher shows Jan Ellenberg one of the many state-of-the-art instruments at NMR. 

ImageRebecca Forsberg

 Tours of infrastructures started at the Swedish NMR Centre, followed by a meeting with Chemical Biology Consortium Sweden (CBCS), tours of Swedish Metabolomics Centre (SMC) and the Data Science Node, including High Performance Computer Center North (HPC2N), National Bioinformatic Infrastructure Sweden (NBIS), and Data Driven Life Science (DDLS). Although much to see, there was still room for coffee and visits in some of the labs where the life science research takes place.  

“The staff is key in running the infrastructures for the greater good of life science research, and meeting the people who do the work at the sites is very important and something I cherish”, Jan Ellenberg said, stressing the importance of working together across the sites in order to both overcome shared problems, and achieve shared ambitions and goals. 
 
During the lunch with Umeå University representatives, including vice-chancellor Hans Adolfsson, and Mikael Elofsson, Dean at the Faculty of Science and Technology, Jan Ellenberg took the opportunity to present himself and his visions for how SciLifeLab and Umeå will strenghten its connections further. Jan Ellenberg provides great inspiration on how infrastructure and large scall research projects can synergise”, said Linda Sandblad.  

The lunch followed with facility tours at Clinical Genomics and UCEM. To summarise the visit, the delegation from SciLifeLab met with staff from Umeå University, to identify possibilities and map out ideas for the future, in order to make life science infrastructures accessible to as many as possible.  

“I feel that here in Umeå you have realised that there is much to gain from working together, with people coming together from different departments and areas of expertise, in order to create the infrastructures and facilities that are needed for the good of life science research”, Jan Ellenberg concluded.  

Annika Johansson, Head of Unit at the Swedish Metabolomics Centre (SMC) shows Jan Ellenberg and Ylva Engström the lab in Umeå. 

ImageRebecca Forsberg