The UMC research team

Department of Microbiology, Uppsala BioCenter, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU)

	Janet Jansson (P. I.) Professor (currently at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, CA, USA) Research More than 20 years of experience in development and application of molecular approaches for investigation of microbial communities in complex environmental samples, including soil, sediment and the human gut. Involved in several national and international research projects projects using a variety of "omics" approaches. Initial UMC project leader
	Sara Hallin (P. I.) Associate Professor Research Ecology of nitrogen-cycling microbial communities in soil and wetland ecosystems. Focus on basic ecology and evolutionary aspects, to elucidate the relationship between genetic diversity and ecosystem functioning, and the factors shaping these communities at different scales and taxonomic levels along environmental gradients. Current UMC project leader
	Susanne Broqvist Departmental Administrator Administration Susanne is employed as administrator at the department of Microbiology, and has since April 2006 also been working as administrative assistant for the UMC network.
	Maria Hellman Research Engineer Research B. Sc. in chemistry and biology at Uppsala University, as well as a teacher’s degree. Her interests concern soil microbiology, with a focus on different methods for studying community compositions.
	Chris Jones Ph. D. student Research Current work focused on evolutionary and ecological aspects of denitrification in bacteria. As this pathway in the nitrogen cycle is a potential source of greenhouse gas emissions, understanding more about the origins and ecology of denitrifying organisms may contribute to mitigation strategies. Denitrification also serves as a model system for testing more general questions relating to the evolution of traits within organisms.
	Ella Wessén Ph. D. student Research Focused on studying bacterial and archaeal communities in agricultural soil. The impact of long-term addition of organic and inorganic fertilizers, as well as nitrogen amendments on both the soil microbial activity and the bacterial and archaeal community structure and abundance, are targeted at different levels of resolution.

Department of Forest Mycology and Pathology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU)

	Jan Stenlid (P. I.) Professor Research Fungal ecology, evolution and genomics to understand the basis of fungal pathogenicity. Head of a research group consisting of about 15 Ph.D. students and postdocs. Within the UMC, he contributes to the fungal diversity and detection aspects.
	Magnus Karlsson Postdoc Research Microorganisms and their interactions with other microbes, with plants and with the environment. His current work within the UMC includes chitinase evolution, and molecular mechanisms of antagonistic fungal interactions.

Department of Molecular Evolution, Evolutionary Biology Center, Uppsala University

	Rolf Bernander (P. I.) Professor Research Archaea and extremophiles, with a long-term focus on regulatory and mechanistic aspects of the chromosome replication, genome segregation and cell division processes. The group provides theoretical and experimental expertise concerning archaea to the different UMC projects, with the main emphasis on the nitrogen cycling and chitinase work packages.
	Erik Karlsson Ph. D. student   Research Ecology and environmental roles of archaea. Working with flow cytometry and PCR-based techniques, he explores the physiological characteristics of the vast group of cold-living archaea that are known almost exclusively from rRNA gene sequence data. The main part of Erik's work is associated with the nitrogen cycling project.
	Ann-Christin Lindås Postdoc Research Ann-Christin is a protein biochemist whose work within the UMC is focused on archaeal chitinases. She has cloned the Pyrococcus furiosus chitinase gene into different expression vectors, and currently works on optimization of protein expression and purification. The aim is to produce purified archaeal chitinase for evaluation of the detection devices developed within the protein scaffold work package.

Department of Limnology, Evolutionary Biology Center, Uppsala University

	Lars Tranvik (P. I.) Professor Research Lars has a broad approach to aquatic biogeochemistry and microbial ecology. In particular, he studies microbial utilization of organic matter, and how this affects the carbon cycle at various scales, ranging from microbial interactions to coupling of ecosystems and global carbon cycling. In recent years, and partly within the UMC, he also focuses on the role of microbial diversity for ecosystem functioning.
	Stefan Bertilsson (P. I.) Associate Professor (Rådsforskare) Research Bertilsson finds aquatic bacteria and archaea fascinating. He has special interests in the dynamic properties of microbial communities, and in molecular approaches to link microbial community composition and biogeochemically significant processes in the carbon cycle. His lab consists of five postdocs and three Ph. D. students working in freshwater, brackish and marine waters.
	Sara Beier Ph. D. student Research Within her Ph. D. project, Sara deciphers the ecology and diversity of chitin-degrading microorganisms in lakes. Using molecular methods at the community and single-cell levels, she intends to (i) identify microbes involved in chitin degradation in lakes, (ii) determine the significance of the process (spatially and temporally), (iii) study physiological responses to chitin availability in chitin-degrading populations.
	Ramiro Logares Postdoc Research Ramiro is interested in the ecology, diversity and evolution of microbes, and uses a variety of molecular approaches to study these subjects. His current work includes studies of chitinase diversity and evolution, marine-freshwater transitions in microbial lineages, and experimental evolution.

 
Department of Biochemistry and Organic Chemistry, Biomedical Center, Uppsala University

	Lars Baltzer (P. I.) Professor Research Centered around the design of functional polypeptides and proteins based on a synthetic amino acid alphabet, with a focus on molecular interactions and catalysis. He is a partner in two centers of excellence and one European IP.
	Xiaojiao Sun Ph. D. student Research Born in Zhejiang, China, she received her B. Sc. at Zhejiang Normal University and her M. Sc. at Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics. Her research focuses on the synthesis of small organic ligands for polypeptide conjugates, and on synthetic strategies for obtaining specificity in the recognition of proteins.

Department of Engineering Sciences, The Ångström Laboratory, Uppsala University

	Klas Hjort (P. I.) Professor Research With 20 years experience in a wide number of micro- and nanoengineering processing technologies, he most often works in close collaboration with application-oriented research groups and industry. He is involved in three national centres of excellence: UMC, neurodiagnostics, and wireless sensor networks.
	Zhigang Wu Postdoc Research Born in Hubei, China, he received a Ph. D. in microfluidics at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Currently, he studies polymer-based lab-on-chip systems for the UMC. His research interests include transport effects in the micro scale and their applications in life sciences and chemistry, e. g. for microfluidic high-throughput biological particle separation.