- Faggruppe dekan
I am a member of the Microbial Ecology and Physiology group at KBM and one of the leaders of the cross-faculty collaboration NMBU-Nitrogen group.
My core interest is the respiratory physiology of denitrifying prokaryotes. These organisms are ubiquitous, and they are the most important source and only relevant sink of N2O. Besides being a useful anesthetic, N2O is the most important destroyer of stratospheric ozone and the third most important greenhouse gas. Modern agricultural practices entail an approximate doubling of the annual global N-input, which in turn exacerbates natural microbial processes, leading to steadily increasing N2O emissions. Thus, understanding and wielding denitrifier metabolism is essential as we search for mitigation strategies.
In 2018 I received a Young Research Talents Grant funded by the Research Council of Norway. Finalized in 2022, this was a basic research project very much focused on understanding the physiology of denitrification, and specifically bet-hedging, which is found in some organisms, with implications for N2O emissions.
In 2021, I was awarded a Novo Nordic Foundation grant under Emerging Investigator within Industrial Biotechnology and Environmental Biotechnology: “Single cell protein production by anaerobic respiration”; AnaPro. Starting in the autumn of 2021, AnaPro is a hybrid between fundamental and applied research. In parallel to leading AnaPro, I take part in a commercialization project, VERIAN, where we explore the commercial potential of the AnaPro process.