Can alternative energy help developing countries “leapfrog” over the pollution and security problems of fossil fuels the same way mobile phone networks are bringing advanced communication services to areas never reached by traditional wireline telephones? Professor Mark Howells, point man for KTH's new relationship with the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), believes it can. It sounds a bit odd, but he points to Norway as a model for African energy development.

Saroosh Shabbir came to KTH with a background in theoretical physics, but her PhD work has pulled her into experimentation around the strange behaviour of light and particles in the sub-atomic quantum world. “I like being able to go beyond analysis and produce evidence to prove the theories,” she says.

PhD candidate Sibel Tombaz’s work in the School of Information and Communication Technology will soon result in a tool allowing network designers to choose the most energy-efficient solutions. She’s proud to be making a contribution to environmental improvement, even if cost-cutting may be more important to the sponsors of her research.

“All respect for pure science, but the approach in this department is to see the challenges from the perspective of companies that have to survive in the real world,” says the ambitious 27-year-old. “We don’t make up problems to study—we work on real problems.”

At the AlbaNova Colloquium, Sir Anthony Leggett, the 2003 Nobel Physics Prize winner, talks about the science of quantum mechanics, looking at how research into the very strange behaviour of atomic particles is beginning to deliver new technologies — even before the fundamental principles are fully understood.

The KTH-led, 26-member consortium BRISK has begun accepting proposals from researchers studying improved production methods for biofuels and thermal biomass conversion. Financed by €11 million in EU research funds, the project emphasises international mobility, inviting students and professors to conduct experiments at dozens of specialised testing facilities across Europe.

 “We’re open for business,” says Andrew Martin, BRISK Director and Associate Professor in the KTH Department of Energy Technology. “We’re focussed on the research infrastructure, on heavy-duty experimentation. We want to produce results that hopefully will lead to commercial products.”

Married in January, Stefano Bonetti and his wife, anthropologist Karin Båge, are preparing to move from Stockholm to California, where Stefano will begin a post-doctoral fellowship at Stanford University studying the smallest and fastest magnetic phenomena known to science.

KTH has been selected to anchor the new Swedish Centre for Smart Grids and Energy Storage (SweGRIDS), bringing academia together with industry and public utilities to tackle the European Union’s ambitious targets for improved energy efficiency. Some one hundred scientists will work on development of electric power grids that respond intelligently to consumer and supplier behaviour.

A University of California Professor, the 1997 Nobel Physics Prize winner and President Barack Obama’s Secretary of Energy paid a visit to KTH on December 8 — all in one person. Spending an afternoon on campus, Dr. Steven Chu delivered a scientific address Thursday and met students in a lab at the AlbaNova Centre for Physics, Astronomy and Biotechnology.

The day before receiving his Nobel Prize in Chemistry on December 10, 2011, Professor Dan Shechtman spoke at KTH on his discovery of a form of matter once held to be impossible. It's a story of science, stubbornness and personal triumph. The full one-hour lecture is presented here.

As Director of the U.S. National Science Foundation, Dr Subra Suresh oversees a federal research budget of some $7 billion, an amount that makes NSF one of the world’s largest funders of scientific studies. But as he explains in this video interview recorded at the KTH Symposium, Sweden makes its mark in international research co-operation by carefully choosing where to apply more limited resources.