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Ulrica Edlund, Professor

Research interests

Polymeric biomaterials have formidable potential but much more knowledge on how to optimize the polymer structure and manipulate polymeric surfaces is imperative for further and refined biomaterials design. My activities comprise synthesis, surface modification, and characterization of polymeric biomaterials, intended for biomedical applications like tissue engineering. Special attention is given to surface modification of polymer biomaterials; chemical functionalization, grafting, patterning and nanostructuring. A related area of great interest are the design of controlled drug delivery matrices.

A focus area is the recovery, formulation, and materials design from renewable resources with special emphasis on the utilization and modification of process and waste fractions from the forestry and agricultural industries. Functional materials such as hydrogels, films, coatings are derived from oligo- and polysaccharide rich fractions.


Director of the research programme Mistra TerraClean  
Mistra TerraClean develops smart and safe engineered materials and devices for clean air and water: tailor-made membranes and filters that adsorb chemicals (such as NOx, VOCs, and heavy metal ions) from contaminated air and water. By smart, we mean materials that interactively respond to, and perform in a controlled fashion, based on stimuli from the environment in operation and the condition of a filter. We evaluate our materials with regard to environmental and safety aspects in a safe-by-design manner.

Honors and awards

  • Elected member of IVA, Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, division IV.
  • Teacher of the year 2017. School of Engineering Sciences of Chemistry, Biotechnology and Health, KTH.
  • Stockholm Business Region Innovation award, 2011.
  • KTHs Teaching Award for outstanding efforts in undergraduate education, 2010.
  • One of 25 selected “outstanding young European scientist forming the future European network” and thereby specially invited to the Workshop of Young European Scientists, 2002, Poland.
  • STINT scholarship for postdoctoral studies, April 2000.
  • Hans Werthén scholarship for postdoctoral studies from Ingenjörsvetenskaps-akademin,(IVA) March 2000.
  • Nobel Foundation scholarship to participate at “Tagung der Nobelpreisträger” (16th seminar for Nobel prize winners in Chemistry) in Lindau am Bodensee, Germany, 1998.

Tv4 Report - Renewable materials from macroalgae