Home
Department of Biological Sciences (BIO)

A good challenge in a great enviroment

Øyvind Halskau is Associate Professor at the Department of Molecular Biology. He supervise both ph.d's and master students.

Main content

MBI is a small department, but its punches above its weight-class, to put it that way.

What have you done today?

The day started with a meeting with other researchers and students. We discussed practical things and also talked about a nice piece of science in the news - a French group has revived a virus that they have found in 30,000 years old permafrost in Siberia.

Afterwards I prepared for experiments my PhD-student and me will run tomorrow. The PhD-student (Øyvind Strømland) and a master student (Morten Govasli) have worked very hard and long to produce this sample, and it gives us new experimental opportunities. We will take it to the NMR instrumentation at the Chemistry Department to run so-called triple-resonance experiments. NMR is a powerful method in molecular biology because one can determine the structure and dynamics of even complex molecules.

After that I went to another meeting, where we worked to improve chemical safety at the department. Safety is already good, but this is a continuous work as new chemicals are introduced and new knowledge about substances are made available.

During the rest of the day I will work with writing up the experimental results of my other PhD-candidate (Hanzhen Wen) into a publication. I will also do some work with one of my courses, MOL310.

 

What do you like about being a scientist at MBI?

MBI is a small department, but its punches above its weight-class, to put it that way. The department is very good at using the funds and resources it has available.

The department also has good scientific questions, built up through years of hard work. I am a relatively new addion to the department, and am trying to reach for this good standard. It's great to have such a challenge in such an environment. The department is well managed and transparent. It is clear how decisions are made and the opportunity to participate is very good.

It's also great that we have a very good and close administration that helps us and share our small victories and defeats. The student environment is also good - we have a steady stream of talented and motivated students from near and far.

 

Read about other talented and dedicated students and emloyees at MBI.