NTNU team - Green Chemistry of Advanced Materials - GreenCAM
NTNU team
Elisabeth Egholm Jacobsen completed her MSc degree in Organic chemistry and Biotechnology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Department of Chemistry in 1999 after employment as an analytical chemist in the cosmetic industry for 11 years. She earned her PhD in Organic Chemistry in 2004. Since 2005 she helds an associate professor position at the same department.
Her research focusses on synthesis of enantiopure biologically active compounds, f. inst. enantiopure drugs, by use of enzymes as chiral catalysts. Her teaching has been focusing on green chemistry, biocatalysis, general and organic chemistry, natural product chemistry, spectroscopic methods and chromatography. She has extensive international collaboration, both in Europe and Asia.
Projects members
Associate Professor Kristofer Paso at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), in Trondheim, Norway researches rheology, polymers, enhanced oil recovery, biosorption, and CO2 capture materials and processes. Dr. Paso is an expert in petroleum flow assurance strategies related to paraffin wax and currently leads a small academic team focused on developing new technologies for sub-sea petroleum production. The new technologies, exploiting the natural or modified rheomalaxis behavior of paraffin wax-oil gels, affords uninterrupted production schedules for complex crude oils while simultaneously mitigating operational risks associated with plugging, gelling, and deposition phenomena.
The R&D efforts will allow new petroleum reserves to be developed with confidence in an environmentally-friendly manner. Intensive case studies have already been performed for fields located in southeast Asia, west coast Africa, and South America. In addition, Kristofer Paso is an expert in lyotropic and fibril liquid crystal systems, for application in CO2 capture and biosorption. At NTNU, Kristofer Paso teaches polymer chemistry and interfacial science. For CO2 capture, Kristofer Paso has developed a new electrolysis-integrated approach for CO2 capture from heavy industrial processes, in which expensive membranes or amine solutions are not needed, constituting the economically cheapest method for CO2 capture for calcination processes, municipal waste incineration, gasification, biomass combustion, iron reduction, biogas upgrading, black liquor incineration, and sewage sludge incineration.
Kristofer Paso concurrently serves as the public advocate for equality and diversity at the faculty of natural sciences at NTNU. Finally, Kristofer Paso serves as the NTNU coordinator for the Nordic Five Tech (N5T) joint Polymer Technology master’s degree program, also encompassing KTH in Sweden, DTU in Denmark, and Aalto university in Finland.
Solon Oikonomopolous earned his PhD in Polymer Chemistry, University of Patras, Greece in 2006. He holds a Diploma in Chemistry, University of Patras, Greece from 2001.
In 2018 he was hired as an associate Professor, at Department of chemistry, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway after a twoyear period as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the same department. Previously he was Postdoctoral Researcher, TPCI, NHRF, Athens, Greece for three years, and he has also been a Research Associate at Cyprus University of Technology, Cyprus and a Postdoctoral Researcher, TPCI, NHRF, Athens, Greece.
His research focuses on synthesis, structural, optoelectronic and morphological characterisation of semiconducting polymers. Functionalization and characterization of graphene, carbon nanotubes and fullerene hybrid materials. Photovoltaic device fabrication and optimization.
Having earned his PhD in Chemical Engineering and holding a position as Postdoctoral Researcher, Sulalit Bandyopadhyay is since 2021 an Associate Professor at the Department of Chemical Engineering, NTNU. He is also employed as a Researcher at the Department of Water Management, TU Delft. He is currently member of the operative group for the recently established Gemini Centre within hydrometallurgy - HYPROS.
He worked as a Polymer Scientist in Jotun Antifouling for a short stint. Before joining Jotun in 2017, he was working as a Post Doctoral Researcher at TU Delft and UNESCO-IHE. He graduated with a B.E (Hons) in Chemical Engineering from Jadavpur University, India and was thereafter awarded the Erasmus Mundus Fellowship to do his MSc in Chemical Engineering at NTNU, Norway.
Vegar Ottesen is a nanotechnologist with a PhD in Chemical Engineering, M.Sc. in bio-nanotechnology. He is a scientific generalist with experience in characterisation and method development in a range of fields, with particular expertise in advanced microscopy techniques (e.g. AFM, SEM, CLSM). Ottesen also works as a science communicator.
Ottesen earned his Ph.D. working on nanocellulose in paper and packaging applications, and worked with nonwoven fiber materials on size scales from nanoscopic to macroscopic. Besides work on paper materials and fundamental research on biopolymer nanofibers Ottesen has performed work on bacterial adhesion and method development for single-cell studies, where cleanroom fabrication techniques and soft lithography were central.
In 2020 he worked as a part of a dedicated group of researchers and engineers at NTNU who developed novel nanomaterial-based reagents for corona testing. Through most of 2020 he was also working on mass production of these reagents, which were and are used in several countries during the ongoing pandemic including Norway, Denmark, India and Nepal.