Department of Clinical Dentistry, University of Bergen

UiB is a modern university with about 14,500 students, 3,200 faculty and staff. UiB is currently involved in 74 FP7 projects, of which 18 it coordinates and 4 are ERC Advanced Grants.  The Faculty of Medicine (MOF) at UiB has about 1800 students and is involved in 12 EU projects, 2 of which it coordinates. The Department of Clinical Dentistry carries out research projects financed by EU, the Research Council of Norway, and the Regional Health Authority.

Competence: The Biomaterial Research Cluster constitutes an arena for various fields of research pertaining materials used in medicine and dentistry and has expertise in biological, physical, chemical, and mechanical testing of such materials (www.uib.no/rg/biomaterial/en). Since 2007 when the Nanotoxicology research area was established within the Cluster, the activities of the group have been integrated in the NanoUiB Platform (http://nano.uib.no) with regard to teaching and research. We collaborate actively with groups in Norway, Canada, UK, Germany, and Spain. The group has received funding from the NanoUiB platform, NFR, the Melzer foundation, and Helse-Vest. One Professor, 1 Associate Professor (myself), 1 senior researcher, 2 postdoctoral fellows, 4 PhD students, 2 MSc students, the latter enrolled in the Nanotechnolgy program are active in currently running projects. Five BSc students from the Nanotechnology program have previously been involved in the groups’ projects. One BSc and 1 PhD student have received prizes at national and international level. Seven published articles, 1 under review, 2 in manuscript and 10 abstracts have resulted so far. Members of the NanoUiB platform are active in a range of disciplines including nano-sensors, nano-materials, new instrumentation for characterisation on the nano-scale and nanotoxicology. The main investigator supervises at the moment 8 students of which 2 PhD, 2 MSc and 1 BSc students involved in nanotoxicity studies. I am a regular reviewer for 6 international journals and a member of the SafeNano Norway organizing committee.

Infrastructure: State of the art equipment and techniques acquired and developed by the research group as well as those at the Microscopy, Flow Cytometry, and Proteomics platforms within MOF and the NanoUiB platform are employed. The Biomaterials cluster posseses dedicated equipment for measuring the physicochemical properties of NP, electrical properties of cells live in real-time, and an ultrahigh  resolution (90 nm)microscope. The NanoUiB platform comprises about 60 people including about 12 permanent scientific staff members.  The platform is equipped with absolute state of the art equipment for nano-scale science, including photo lithography, a fully equipped electron beam lithography laboratory with an ISO-5 cleanroom  (http://www.uib.no/aktuelt/nyheter/2011/03/uib-har-faatt-nanolaboratorium), micro-contact-printing, biofunctinalized nanopaterning, microfluidics facilities, and extensive equipment for NP characterisation.