News

SPARK Norway is UiO:Life Science’s innovation programme for health-related life sciences. Meet three of the SPARKees in our new videos and get inspired to submit your application by 15 November.

Det er uvanlig at to Nobelprisene går til forskere og tema, hvor en og samme professor på IBV er ekspert.  Slik er det nemlig i år; professor Inger Sandlie arbeider innen begge områdene for disse to prisene.

At a meeting for all CEES members, Professor Kjetill S. Jakobsen was introduced as the new Chair of CEES by the Head of the Department of Biosciences, Rein Aasland.

UiO:Life Science hopes to see Norwegian finalists in the pitch competition at the tech conference SLUSH in Helsinki on 5 December. The winner is granted 30 000 euros. Life science students and researchers in startups or pre-startups are welcome to apply before 1 October at 12:00.

A major challenge in computational neuroscience is to specify the often large number of parameters that define neuron and neural network models. Many of these parameters have an inherent variability, and some are even actively regulated and change with time.

Are you a scientist working on health-related topics in the life science domain? Do you have an idea for a new solution or technology with innovation potential, but need help to take the next steps? Why not let the new two-year SPARK Norway programme at UiO help you!

At present UiO:Life Science funds seven convergence environments that address major challenges within life sciences related to health and environment/sustainable growth. A new application round starts now. Researchers from all units at UiO are welcome to participate.

Nils Chr. Stenseth will become a strategic adviser at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences after leaving as head of the Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES) at the Department of Biosciences.

Six new teams have been admitted to UiO´s innovation programme SPARK Norway. They will develop their ideas within health-related life sciences for the benefit of patients and society.

Hva kan fysikere bidra med i hjerneforskning? Ph.D student Milad H. Mobarhan gir elever fra den videregående skole et innblikk i dette i sitt glimrende foredrag under universitetets åpen dag. Se forelesningen her.

We're excited to find our paper on perineuronal nets and longterm memories picked by the editors in PNAS to be highlighted in this issue. They have written an excellent recap of our paper.

The new study "Human ectoparasites and the spread of plague in Europe during the Second Pandemic" by Katharine R. Dean et al. (PNAS, 2018) receives international as well as national attention with its "provocative" findings. Find links to the articles here!

Society for Neuroscience journals (JNeurosci and eNeuro) published more than 1,150 research manuscripts in 2017. Among the top 10 articles saved to Mendeley is our paper on perineuronal nets in hippocampus, entorhinal cortex and visual cortex.

Neurons’ sugar coating is essential for long-term memories

How the brain is able to store memories over long periods of time has been a persistent mystery to neuroscientists. In a new study, researchers from the Centre for Integrative Neuroplasticity (CINPLA) at the University of Oslo show that long-lived extracellular matrix molecules called perineuronal nets are essential for distant memories.

The new research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that removal of the nets disrupts distant but not recent memories. 

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/12/21/1713530115

The new innovation programme SPARK Norway at UiO has admitted the first research groups – so called SPARKees. They will develop their ideas within health-related life sciences further for the benefit of patients and society. 

The biggest thing that happened in UiO:Life Science in 2017 was of course the announcement of the start-up grant for the life science building on the national budget for 2018! Read about this and other things that has happened in the initiative so far in 2017.

The Norwegian Research Council has approved the research application of the Nansen Legacy. After six years of planning, the Nansen Legacy is now ready to take Arctic marine research a long way further in understanding how climate and ecosystems interact in the northern Barents Sea.

SPARK Norway is a two-year innovation programme to further develop ideas within health-related life sciences for the benefit of patients and society. Researchers from UiO and affiliated research groups at OUS or Ahus can apply UiO:Life Science to be included in the programme.

Congratulations to Mina Martine Frey for successfully defending her Master's thesis on October 31, 2017.

PhD student Solveig Næss and coauthors provide novel information on the nature of EEG signals with forward modelling.

This paper presents a model fitting approach, where the model parameters (ion-channel conductances) are fitted in a stepwise manner and aims to reproduce  membrane potential dynamics in the soma and along the dendrites. The method could prove useful for fitting to data from voltage-sensitive dye (VSD) imaging techniques.

Dr. Pål Trosvik talks about competing gut bacteria and the latest article from his group, in Norgesglasset on NRK Radio. Listen to the episode here!

New publication in PNAS with first authors from University of Ferrara, Italy, and CEES at IBV, University of Oslo, Norway.

Dr. Mark Ravinet on speciation on the "Slightly Evolved" podcast.

We had a full house when Shinya Yamanaka, 2012 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, visited Oslo on September 6. He gave a lecture about a new era of medicine with induced pluripotent stem cells – iPS cells – and participated in a panel discussion on implications of stem cell therapy for patients and society. Watch the videos and see pictures from the events.