Regional finals of the 2015 Researchers’ Grand Prix were held around Sweden during Researchers’ Night and in October.
Here are the eight finalists, who competed in the national final in Stockholm on 26 November 2015.
Finalist: Blekinge
Johanna Tell
Child health care services online
I am a PhD student in the field of Applied Health Technology as well as a nurse with a burning conviction that every child in Sweden is entitled to equal and fair child health services of good quality! My research looks at the use and development of online resources for nurses working in child health care to ensure they meet their needs.
Finalist and national winner: Borås
Sunil Kumar Ramamoorthy
Sustainable materials for a green future
I am researching and developing new polymer materials that can be used to manufacture plastic products, technical textiles and composites. These materials are manufactured from renewable resources, such as natural fibres and soybean oil, replacing the need to use petroleum-based resources.
Finalist: Eskilstuna/Västerås
Lena Marmstål Hammar
The use of song in dementia care
I’m researching the benefits of singing for people with severe dementia. In Västerås and Stockholm there are several care homes for people with dementia that use singing as way to communicate as part of their care.
Finalist: Malmö
Silvia Galli
Healing bones with dissolving metal
I’m a dentist and four years ago, I started researching metallic biomaterials. These particular types of metal have an amazing feature: they dissolve in the body after they have fulfilled their function and can be used to effectively repair bone fractures or defects.
Finalist: Stockholm
Oskar Lundberg
What causes the noise from car tyres?
The sounds around us affect us in many different ways. They can be distracting, used for communication or, as with beautiful music, bring us pleasure! But what generates the sounds? I am an acoustics researcher and am investigating what causes the noise from car tyres – the greatest source of noise in Europe.
Finalist: Trollhättan
Sabina Kapetanovic
How do young people spend their spare time and how do we engage them?
I am researching young people’s everyday lives and am, by profession, a high school teacher. Recently, I was given the opportunity to get involved in research into the development of young people through a postdoctoral fellowship in which we are following around 1,500 pupils over a period of five years. The focus is on preteens, the stage between early childhood and adolescence, investigating what they spend their time doing, who they socialise with and what is the best way to engage them.
Finalist: Lund
Tuva Richert
Recreating the universe’s primordial soup
I’m researching what the universe consisted of a microsecond after the Big Bang. Long before there were even protons and neutrons, the universe was a soup of quarks and gluons, a special kind of matter that exists only under extreme pressure and temperature. Specialist equipment in the particle physics lab at CERN can be used to recreate and record the collisions but doesn’t register the quark-gluon plasma directly because it does not exist long enough to reach our measuring instruments. Instead we must use detective work to go backwards; tracking, identifying, sorting and comparing the millions of particles created when quarks are bound together in order to better understand the properties of the universe’s primordial soup.
Finalist: Växjö
Fredrik Ahlgren
Utilising waste heat on Finland ferries
I am a PhD student in the field of Maritime Sciences and am researching how ships can be made more energy efficient. Shipping is the most efficient form of transport and nearly 90% of goods travel by sea but most ships use heavy fuel oil, one of the dirtiest fuels. The transport sector is rapidly growing and there is a great need for more sustainable solutions. I am currently conducting a study on cruise ships between Stockholm and Finland to investigate how new technologies can be used to utilise waste heat that currently just goes up the chimney.
