My research activities was
started with basic experiments in chemistry in our garage since I was 16 years
old. However, I didn't have any real research activity, until being the
second-year student at the university in chemical engineering. My first
experience was in the field of fluid mechanics. Then I worked on improvement of
dry cell batteries for two years as well as some feasibility studies of small
chemical and non-chemical plants. In the meantime, I paid more attention to the
biological systems in nature, where I first worked on some sequential projects
to separate and process chemicals from Pistacia
atlantica gum.
In the line of biological systems, I have
further oriented my works in the field of biotechnology. I did my first project
in this field on production of glutamic acid from
molasses in 1992-1994. Then, I decided to continue my education in
biotechnology. My Ph.D. work was on fermentation of dilute-acid hydrolyzates,
where I studied physiological effects of inhibitors and process development for
ethanol production from lignocellulosic hydrolyzates. While graduated in 1999,
I got a position as assistant professor at Chalmers University of Technology (
I am currently leading the research
group of biotechnology at University of Borås, which
is part of a larger research profile in “Resource Recovery”. In this group, we
are working on “waste biorefinery” in which different
types of solid wastes and residuals (industrial, municipal, forest, etc) are
converted to value-added products such as ethanol, biogas and biological
superabsorbents.
For more information my current research, you
may look at the individual projects on our website www.hb.se/ih/research/biotechnology.