Aarhus University now has its new management for the engineering area in place, and on 1 March 2021, four heads of department will take up their positions.

A new study from Aarhus University shows that almost a third of the Danes have reduced or stopped their meat consumption. Among these are, in particular, people with higher education, people in larger cities, women and young people.

Aarhus University is to head development of the next generation of electric car batteries with a recharging time of just six minutes. The EU is investing a total EUR 11.5 million in the project.

Since 2011 the Young Investigator-programme from the VILLUM Foundation has supported the carriers of young and ambitious researchers. This year two new promising talents has received a grant amounting to approx. 12 mio. DKK.

Monday 18 January was demo day at Jydsk Emblem Fabrik A/S in Malling – a 135-year-old family-owned company, which was demonstrating an intelligent, self-propelled, collaborative mobile robot manipulator system in its production processes.

A new grass weed species has in recent years become a bigger and bigger problem in winter cereals and grass seed crops. Knowledge about rattail fescue has so far been very limited, but researchers from the Department of Agroecology at Aarhus University in Flakkebjerg have investigated the rattail fescue's biology, phenology, competitive ability, and the effect of various control strategies.

Scientists are combining artificial intelligence and advanced computer technology with biological know how to identify insects with supernatural speed. This opens up new possibilities for describing unknown species and for tracking the life of insects across space and time.

The Novo Nordisk Foundation has granted funding to a project to develop a multi-step system to treat water for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. The method is based on nature's own enzymes and a completely new nanomaterial being developed by researchers at Aarhus University.

The potential of autonomous solutions for offshore operations in the maritime sector is huge. The Danish drone company Upteko is collaborating with researchers from Aarhus University to develop next-generation drone technologies and artificial intelligence for everything from rescue operations to 3D scans and inspections of entire ships.

Researchers from Aarhus University aim to enable the use of data-driven deep learning models for wind farm flow simulations, optimization and control, making them more energy-efficient. The project has received a grant from the Independent Research Fund Denmark.

At the turn of the year, Aarhus University has implemented an organisational change to open four new departments. This is part of work to enhance research and educational activities within engineering science.

Using an unusual, light-dependent enzyme and a newly discovered enzymatic mechanism, researchers from Aarhus University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology have enabled the biological synthesis of high-yield industry relevant production of climate neutral drop-in fuels from biowaste.

Kidney diseases, atherosclerosis, colon cancer, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and neurological disorders are five global health problems that the first five research projects in the Open Discovery Innovation Network (ODIN) are now addressing. In the projects, researchers from Aarhus University and the pharmaceutical industry are working together in full openness to generate new knowledge and new tools that can be used to develop new drugs.

The groundbreaking open research collaboration, so far between Aarhus University and nine pharmaceutical and biotech companies, ODIN, is now up and running, and the researchers are ready to embark on their first joint projects aiming at fostering the development of new drugs throughout the world. The platform is completely open with the goal that all knowledge and results will be shared within the network and made available to the public free of charge.

What is a baking contest winner made of? Equal parts of pure joy of baking mixed with scientific curiosity is the recipe for Mads Eg Andersen, who studies molecular biology at Aarhus University. He has benefited from his scientific approach throughout the season of The Great Bake Off, and his perfected chocolate work secured his victory in the final.

Over the next four years, a major new EU project will examine how noise from shipping affects the marine environment and identify solutions to make ships quieter. Project SATURN has participants from ten countries, and researchers from AU will play a key role.

Researchers from Aarhus University have modelled the decarbonisation of the sector-coupled European energy system using very high-resolution data. The results are clear: To reach climate-neutrality by 2050 we need solar energy. And lots of it.

Peter Henriksen, senior researcher at the Department of Bioscience will take up the position as the new head of WATEC on 1 December 2020. The research centre was founded in 2017, and is now among the research elite, with close collaboration relations near and far. The new centre director is looking forward to being in charge of the centre, which works on key societal challenges.

Seagrass meadows the world over have vanished over the last 100 years. Danish eel grass meadows too are not growing as they did in the past. A new study of Danish measurements since 1890 suggests that the prevalence of eel grass meadows has dwindled because of eutrophication, bottom trawling and sea warming.

In collaboration with the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), the Department of Engineering at Aarhus University has developed photonic sensor technology that can pave the way for a portable, reliable and, above all, inexpensive device for detecting ammonia and other gases in agriculture.

As the new vice-president of the European Association for Storage of Energy (EASE), Aarhus University will play an important role in European efforts to promote the green transition.

A new cross-disciplinary centre will develop brain-machine interface technologies. One of the goals is to develop the next generation of technology to monitor, diagnose, and treat brain diseases while at the same time developing brand new brain-inspired AI hardware.

When the four new engineering departments open on 1 January 2021, they will have a transitional management until the appointment process for the new heads of department has been completed. The acting heads of department and deputy heads of department are now in place to ensure that the new departments get off to a good start.

A new research project at Aarhus University will use Bayesian Neural Networks to model, analyse and understand trading behaviour in the world of finance. The researchers behind the project expect the technology to revolutionise our understanding of financial data.

There are lots of green, modern agricultural technologies, but they are used far too little. With funding of DKK 15 million, a number of European innovation hubs will now find out how technologies can be promoted and adapted to the users.

ReDoCO2 is a new Danish development project, which the Innovation Fund Denmark supports with DKK 24.3 million. kr. Researchers from the Department of Agroecology will, in collaboration with Aalborg University, RegionMidt, SkyTEM, and I • GIS, develop methods and technology for mapping and analysing peatlands, one of the major sources of CO2 emissions in agriculture. The project will develop methods for a more accurate determination of the distribution of peat soils as well as carbon stocks here.

Independent Research Fund Denmark (DFF) has just published the 65 research projects on the green transition that have been awarded grants. At the Faculty of Technical Sciences, nine projects can now focus on this socially important research area.

In a new international cross disciplinary study, researchers have used artificial intelligence to analyse large amounts of historical photos from WW2. Among other things, the study shows that artificial intelligence can recognise the identity of photographers based on the content of photos taken by them.

Professor Martyn Tranter from the Department of Environmental Science has been selected to receive the prestigious Julia and Johannes Weertman Medal 2021 from the European Geoscience Union (EGU). The award is given for his leading-edge work at AU on glaciology. The award will be presented in 2021.

A pan-European consortium consisting of vehicle manufacturers, research institutes and suppliers have joined forces to set up a new research and development project that will help industry convert from physical to virtual prototypes.

The Department of Engineering, Aarhus University, has received a grant from the Independent Research Fund Denmark to investigate nonlinear effects in semiconductor lasers – a stepping-stone to enable next generation higher-order modulation in fibre optic networks.

At a board meeting on 8 October, the AU board gave the green light to establish four new engineering departments at the university. The purpose of the new organisation is to consolidate the academic environments across Aarhus University School of Engineering and the Department of Engineering. The new departments will open on 1 January 2021.

Danmarks Sportsfiskerforbund (Danish Sports Fishing Association) has just awarded its Nature and Environment award, which is presented for sustainability initiatives in nature and the environment. This year, the award went to Professor Stiig Markager from the Department of Bioscience at Aarhus University. He received the award for his vigorous participation in the public debate on research in the Danish marine environment.

VILLUM Experiment has just awarded grants to a number of researchers, who each represent innovative approaches to their research areas, and who can now test their courageous and strange technical and scientific research ideas. At Aarhus University, nine researchers received a total of DKK 17.8 million.

After three years of strenuous effort, the Faculty of Technical Sciences (Tech) has now obtained documentation for the high quality in its public sector consultancy: Last week, the faculty was the first in Denmark to be certified under the international ISO 9001 standard for its public sector consultancy. This documents and ensures that consultancy activity at Tech is of high quality to benefit both the university and its clients.

Professor Ole Hertel is switching career path from being one of Denmark's leading researchers in air quality to taking up a position as the head of department at the Department of Bioscience. He will start on 1 November 2020.

A new research project is aiming to develop a camera-based separation system that can separate plastic waste according to type. The machine will be implemented at plastic recyclers, enabling the manufacturing industry to significantly increase the use of recycled plastics.

Intelligent marine robots open up a wide range of possibilities in the vast unknown areas below sea level, covering more than 70 per cent of the surface of the Earth. However, we need reliable artificial intelligence if robots are to operate on their own. A new EU-funded project will address this problem.

A large-scale industrial and academic collaboration project between Ringkøbing-Skjern Municipality and Aarhus University is 'a huge opportunity', says the mayor of the municipality, who welcomes the new initiative.

The Novo Nordisk Foundation has granted DKK 15 million from its interdisciplinary synergy programme to project DRAMA. With researchers from both Nat and Tech, the project will decipher the role of atmospheric microbial aerosols for cloud formation.

It is possible to produce healthier alternatives to the processed meat products, which are in high demand in Denmark as well as in the rest of Europe, but how do consumers respond to the different options, and which ones do they prefer? In a new project funded by the European Innovation and Technology (EIT) Food, researchers from the MAPP Centre at Aarhus University are investigating this with colleagues from Spain and the UK.

Single-celled algae generate approximately 50% of the world's oxygen production. Despite the huge prevalence of these algae and in the world's oceans, knowledge about their life cycle is often rather sparse. However, researchers have now shown that the reproductive capacity of single-celled algae depends on their growth conditions, and that the microscopic algae are perhaps far more complex than previously assumed.

An international research team has looked at life on the surfaces of glaciers. Their work may turn out to challenge our previous understanding about the evolutionary arms race between viruses and their host organisms. The study has just been published in Nature Communications.

This year, Technical Sciences welcomes 1,131 new students on the engineering degree programmes and agrobiology. Due to corona, orientation days are a little different than usual, and yet still the same.

A new project, supported by Independent Research Fund Denmark, will make it possible to read data directly from compressed IoT data. The project is being headed by researchers from Aarhus University and it is a collaboration with, among others, MIT and Boston University.

A citizen's council is to be set up with 99 randomly selected Danish citizens as part of the government's new climate legislation. Professor Jørgen E. Olesen from AU is to join the expert panel that will validate the topics that the citizens' council is to address.

Today, drones can autonomously carry out various tasks with zero or minimum involvement by human operators. However, they need to fly as slow as possible to sense their environment and plan future actions. But what if drones need to fly fast like in a manual drone race where speed, agility, and performance are paramount? A team of researchers from Aarhus University have just taken a step forward.

20 per cent more students will be offered a place at Technical Sciences this year. There are also still vacant places, because the university has increased its capacity in the wake of corona.

A large count of the porpoise population in the Kattegat, Bælthavet (the belt seas) and the western part of the Baltic Sea is well underway. The survey is known as MiniSCANS II. The objective of the survey is to estimate the abundance and distribution of porpoise in this area.

A Danish research team has invented a natural additive for livestock manure to reduce emissions of various gases from the manure, for example the greenhouse gas methane.

As expected, applications to Denmark’s higher education degree programmes have increased this year – this also applies to Aarhus University, which has received 5% more first-choice applications compared to last year. Preliminary figures show that engineering and IT degree programmes have seen the greatest increase.

A number of synthetic dyes in foods are suspected of having unwanted side effects especially for children. For this reason, over the past ten years, the EU has required products containing selected synthetic dyes to have clear warning labels on the packaging. This has resulted in a great demand for natural dyes worldwide. Now researchers from Aarhus University have found a method that can turn ordinary orange carrots black from which it is possible to extract dyes for food. It creates new opportunities in the production of natural dyes for the food industry as a substitute for the synthetic ones.

Professor Brian Vinter will be the new vice-dean for research from 1. August. He comes from a position at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen. The new vice-dean comes from a solid background in the intersection between knowledge and industry, and has a good sense of where technological developments are going.

One of Denmark’s most northern research stations is in danger. The permafrost in the surrounding landscape is thawing, leaving the cliffs bare and at risk of being swept away by the river that has moved closer to the research facilities. The Zackenberg research station has become very real and sad proof of what it was designed to investigate: the speed of global warming and its impacts on nature.

The Department of Food Science at Aarhus University strengthens its strategic focus on research on innovative, sustainable packaging solutions with the appointment of two new tenure tracks, who are highly specialized in this area.

Danish upper-secondary school students can now try their hand at scientific research and perhaps even help in a discovery that could have a major impact on millions of people all over the world. A grant from the Novo Nordisk Foundation has given Aarhus University the opportunity to let school students take part in important research to find new antibiotics.

Muscle, kidney and liver samples have been taken for analysis from Greenlandic sled dogs. Researchers have compared the DNA from the dogs with DNA from the 9,500-year-old Siberian Zhokhov dog, and a 33,000-year-old Siberian wolf. The analysis shows that humans were able to use the tough sled dog to conquer the brutal Arctic almost 10,000 years ago.

Climate change leads to longer growing seasons in the Arctic. A new study, which has just been published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, show that predators like wolf spiders respond to the changing conditions and have been able to produce two clutches of offspring during the short Arctic summer.

More students are to have the opportunity to study a technical-scientific degree programme at Aarhus University, and after the summer holidays, 231 more applicants will be able to take one of the new student places at the Faculty of Technical Sciences.

How does organic plant production differ from conventional in relation to nitrous oxide emissions and nitrogen leaching? Researchers from Aarhus University, among others, have looked at the literature to create an overview and a better understanding of what constitutes differences between organic and conventional plant production.

A new Danish-led research project will allow swarms of advanced, autonomous drones to keep a watchful eye on bridges and railways and report if something needs to be repaired.

The Food eHub at the Department of Food Science, Aarhus University, has helped a local start-up company to secure funding from Future Food & Bioresource Innovation. The funding will support the development of the product Olden Kombucha, a fermented drink made with tea, in cooperation with the Aarhus University School of Engineering and the company ISI Food Protection.

Aarhus University focuses on developing sustainable packaging solutions for food. In a new research project, the MAPP Centre will be involved in investigating how consumers respond to sustainable packaging.

New study uses museum collections and citizen-science observations to document how climate change affects the phenology of Danish hoverflies.

We need to consume less sugar, but how can the industry create sugar-reduced food products without compromising on the sweet taste? Researchers from the Department of Food Science at Aarhus University have looked into the matter on the background of an extensive literature review.

Researchers from Aarhus University and the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology have quantified and described the environmental consequences of the lockdown in Italy. The study has also estimated greenhouse gas emissions in relation to possible economic recovery scenarios in connection with the Italian reopening.

Department of Environmental Science is now one soil biologist richer. Flemming Ekelund, an associate professor at the Department of Biology at the University of Copenhagen, has been appointed an honorary professor at Aarhus University.

The dean of the Faculty of Technical Sciences is proposing a new organisation, with four new departments, to consolidate and strengthen the engineering area at AU around core disciplines and to raise engineering to the highest international level. The consultation process for the new organisation will commence before the summer holidays.

Cecilie Hermansen from the Department of Agroecology has been awarded Aarhus University Research Foundation's PhD Award 2020. The prize will be awarded 4 June.

Independent Research Fund Denmark grants DKK 23.8 million to six research projects at Technical Sciences

From 1 June, the appointment of Professor Peter Langen will reinforce climate research at the Department of Environmental Science and iClimate. Peter Langen comes from a management position at DMI - Danish Meteorological Institute, and he will be involved in building up and developing research into climate modelling at the department. The appointment is a bit of a scoop, explains Head of Department Carsten Suhr Jacobsen, who believes that Peter Langen can put AU on the world map.

Tired of that little swirl in your hair you can never get straight? You might as well get used to it, for nature has a very good reason for putting it there.

Sustainability is much more complex than you might think, and therefore teaching the topic is very important, says an AU researcher from the Department of Engineering.

With membership of the European Association for Storage of Energy (EASE), Aarhus University will play an important role in European efforts to promote the green transition. Membership will also enhance university research into new storage technologies.

Doctors and engineers have together developed an electric stocking to prevent loss of muscle mass in bed-ridden patients. During the coming months, the stocking will be tested on Danish Covid-19 patients at intensive care units in Denmark.

The world has been hit hard by coronavirus, and health services and authorities everywhere are struggling to reduce the spread, combat the disease and protect the population. Nevertheless, the pandemic will cost lives throughout the world. An environmental researcher from Aarhus University has studied whether there could be a link between the high mortality rate seen in northern Italy, and the level of air pollution in the same region. The short answer is “yes possibly”. The long answer is in the article below.

Working and studying has been different in just as many ways as there are employees and students, and together, each in their own way, they are keeping the wheels of Tech running. Separately. Meet some of them here.

The EU Research and Innovation Programme, Horizon 2020, has granted more than DKK 70 million (EUR 9.4 million) to a new research project to make it easy for small and medium-sized European production companies to benefit from digital twins.

With more than a quarter of a billion DKK, and in close collaboration with more than 50 industrial partners, Danish researchers and experts are now joining forces in the MADE FAST development project, aiming to make Danish production more efficient, flexible and sustainable.

A new research project at Aarhus University will exploit millions of years of evolution to develop sustainable biofuels. Among other things, the solution lies in the digestive system of pandas.

Twenty-four European research organisations from 16 European countries have joined forces in a new research alliance to forge the foundation for reducing dependence on chemical pesticides in EU agriculture. The initiative is called 'Towards a Chemical Pesticide-free Agriculture', and the collaboration will rethink the way in which research is carried out within agroecology and plant protection.

Aarhus University and several international pharmaceutical companies are joining forces in the Open Discovery Innovation Network (ODIN), a ground-breaking open research collaboration for which the Novo Nordisk Foundation has awarded a grant of DKK 54.5 million.

Lars Ditlev Mørck Ottosen will take over as Acting Head of Department as of 1 May 2020 when Thomas Toftegaard stops

Drone pilots may become superfluous in the future. New research from Aarhus University has allowed artificial intelligence to take over control of drones scanning and measuring terrain.

A new research project at the Department of Engineering, Aarhus University, will develop highly efficient, but inexpensive, components in flow batteries. The aim is to disrupt the field of stationary batteries, which are necessary for the transition to a green energy system.

According to the Ministry of Environment and Food, Denmark should reduce the nitrogen load on coastal areas by 13,000 tonnes per year. Targeted measures will according to researchers from Aarhus University be able to reduce the required amount of Danish agricultural land from 35% of Danish agricultural land to just 23%.

From 1 March 2020, Jørgen E. Olesen will officially take over as department head at the Department of Agroecology. He has been the acting head of department since September 2019.

The Faculties of Natural Sciences and Technical Sciences account for no fewer than 16 of the 23 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships reaped by Aarhus University in the 2019 round.

The interdisciplinary Center for Quantitative Genetics and Genomics (QGG) is to be expanded, and in future it will have the status of a department-like centre under the new Faculty of Technical Sciences. The centre director, Professor Mogens Sandø Lund, will be joining the faculty management team. The change came into force on 1 January 2020.

Over the past year, Professor Lars Henrik Andersen has been acting dean at Science and Technology, not only as the head of the largest faculty at AU, but also overseeing one of the largest organisational changes ever at the university. With the appointment of the new NAT dean, Lars H. Andersen will soon be stepping down and again focusing on his research

The case of the beef report has challenged Aarhus University's credibility. Therefore, the university's independence must always be based on transparency and arm's length. Kurt Nielsen, vice-dean at Technical Sciences, has published a contribution to the debate in the journal Ingeniøren.

Researchers at the Department of Engineering are world leaders in brain measurement via a special device fitted in the ear like a hearing aid. The technology is called ear-EEG, and now the university has received a new grant to ensure further development of this Danish-designed method.

A new research project at the Department of Engineering, Aarhus University aims to recycle plastic waste into a standardised filament product for the 3D printing industry.

1 January 2020 marks the start of two new faculties at Aarhus University. From this date, Aarhus University will consist of five faculties in total, when the faculty of Science and Technology is divided into the Faculty of Technical Sciences and the Faculty of Natural Sciences.

Replacing meat with vegetables on our plates entails more than just changing habits. The transition also requires new knowledge about sustainable cultivation methods on fields. The Department of Food Science is researching how vegetable growers can keep up with increasing demand, with the least possible impact on the environment. Find out more in the podcast below (in Danish).

A group of Danish universities and companies are working together to set up a joint high-tech laboratory centre, FOODHAY, which aims to develop healthier, more sustainable foods and reduce food waste. FOODHAY is an important step towards greener food, says the Danish Minister for Higher Education and Science, Ane Halsboe-Jørgensen, whose ministry is contributing a total of DKK 51.5 million (EUR 6.9 mill.).