MAXESS Life Science Route (Pilot)
It will be easier for life science companies to conduct experiments at MAX IV and ESS. In a new collaboration, the life science incubator SmiLe, MAXESS Industry Arena are developing a new platform – MAXESS Life Science Route.
The two-year project, which is funded by the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth, will support product development at up to 50 small and medium sized companies in southern Sweden. The goal is to increase awareness of the opportunities at MAX IV and ESS (or other neutron research facilities) – the project will strengthen life science companies in Skåne.
The project includes education and preparations for companies from the SmiLe community to conduct experiments at MAX IV and, in the future, at ESS. SmiLe and its partner companies will then serve as an entry environment for other life science companies that want to conduct similar studies. Experiments at the research facilities require extensive preparations and expertise, which is where SmiLe’s laboratories will play a key role. The companies will also receive help after the experiments with analysis of the extensive quantity of data that are generated.
Northern Lights on Food
The Northern Lights on Food (NLF) is an ongoing collaboration that aims to establish Sweden as the leading global food science nation for innovative, sustainable, healthy and tasty food through a leap in understanding of food structure, processing and function. This will be possible with the new world-class research infrastructures MAX IV and ESS that make use of X-rays and neutrons, respectively, to unravel food structures.
The long-term vision is to expand NLF into a European Food Laboratory (EFL) for food science research and related applications. Situated in Science Village Scandinavia next to MAX IV and ESS, EFL will be a physical and virtual arena where food scientists in academia and industry meet, collaborate, and integrate advanced X-ray and neutron techniques into their skillset.
Infralife
InfraLife is a collaboration between SciLifeLab, ESS and MAX IV with the mission to improve knowledge and availability of research infrastructure and making it accessible to life science researchers in academia, industry and healthcare. Research and Infrastructure is a priority area in the Swedish Life Science strategy (PDF).
With InfraLife, the partners aim to increase the use of Swedish research infrastructures, broaden the user base to represent a range of stakeholders and stimulate cross-sectoral collaboration, to address some of today’s grand challenges. These challenges require a collaborative and cross-disciplinary approach – where InfraLife aims to serve as a hub connecting stakeholders, displaying the potential of the advanced technologies and making these unprecedented tools accessible to be utilized in addressing complex research questions.
The InfraLife Hub aims to improve the knowledge, availability and user base of unique technologies and services offered by the three infrastructures. It will also create opportunities for tech development, transfer and innovation with industry.
Long term collaborations
Swedness
SwedNess is a graduate school for neutron scattering, funded by the Foundation for Strategic research (SSF) and operated by six Swedish universities: Uppsala University (coordinator), Chalmers University of Technology, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Linköping University, Lund University and Stockholm University. SwedNess has the goal to educate doctoral students to expand Sweden’s expertise in neutron scattering to exploit ESS now under construction in Lund.
Halos
Hanseatic League of Science (HALOS) is an EU project in the program area Öresund-Kattegatt-Skagerak (ÖKS) interreg that started 1st of February 2019. HALOS is a unique collaboration between Hamburg and South-West Scandinavia, bringing together four unique research facilities MAX IV, ESS, DESY and European XFEL, and creating a centre for integrated, world-leading Life Science innovation and research.
