Photo of Eleni Stavrinidou

Eleni Stavrinidou

Senior Associate Professor, Head of Unit

Principal Investigator at Electronic Plants, Laboratory of Organic Electronics

Presentation

Eleni Stavrinidou received her Bachelor’s degree in Physics in 2008 from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece) and then her Master’s degree in Nanotechnology from the same university, in 2010. She then joined the group of George Malliaras at the Department of Bioelectronics of Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Saint-Étienne (France) where she completed her PhD on Microelectronics in 2014. Her work there focused on understanding and engineering ion transport in conducting polymers.

Stavrinidou then joined the Laboratory of Organic Electronics (LOE) at Linköping University as a Postdoctoral Scholar working with Magnus Berggren and Daniel Simon. During her post-doc she developed organic electronic devices integrated within living plants, introducing the concept of Electronic Plants. In 2016 she received a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship.

In 2017 Stavrinidou became Assistant Professor of Organic Electronics at Linköping University and established the Electronic Plants group. She received several grants including a Swedish Research Council Starting Grant and an EU FET-OPEN grant which she was the coordinator. In 2020 she became Associate Professor and Docent in Applied Physics. The same year she was awarded the Future Research Leaders grant of the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research. In 2021 Eleni Stavrinidou became Associated Group Leader at the Umeå Plant Science Center. The same year she was awarded the ERC-Staring Grant. Stavrinidou is recipient of the L’ORÉAL-UNESCO For Women in Science prize in Sweden (2019) and the Tage Erlander Prize for Natural Sciences and Technology from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (2023). In 2023 Stavrinidou became Senior Associate Professor of Bioengineering.

Stavrinidou’s research is driven both by societal needs and scientific curiosity. From one side her vision is to develop technologies that will enable new discoveries in plant science that can lead to more sustainable food production and to plants that can thrive in the changing climate. From the other side she envisions the development of a next generation technology that is based on the amalgamation of living and artificial components, enabling new technological concepts but also increasing the sophistication of our communication with the biological world.

Short CV (pdf)

Eleni StavrinidouEleni Stavrinidou Photo credit Thor Balkhed

 

Plant Bioelectronics: A glimpse in our research

Research

News

Two researchers connect a beaker of water to some wires.

Electronic “soil” enhances crop growth

Barley seedlings grow on average 50% more when their root system is stimulated electrically through a new cultivation substrate.  LiU-researchers have developed an electrically conductive “soil” for hydroponics.

Abdul Manan Dar and Eleni Stavrinidou.

Fast electrical signals mapped in plants with new technology

What happens inside the carnivorous plant Venus Flytrap when it catches an insect? New technology has led to discoveries about the electrical signalling that causes the trap to snap shut.

Eleni Stavrinidou

She combines plants and technology for a sustainable future

Eleni Stavrinidou is principal investigator at Electronic plants at Linköping University’s Laboratory of Organic Electronics. Her vision is to develop technologies that will enable new discoveries in plant biology.

Eleni Stavrinidou

Eleni Stavrinidou awarded ERC Starting Grant

Incorporating electronic and responsive materials in plant cells in order to produce composites that maintain the living properties of cells and, in the long term, create sustainable systems using nature’s own methods is the focus of her project.

Two women, Dr Eleni Stavrinidou and PhD student Daniela Parker, holding the biohybrid plant.

Storing energy in plants with electronic roots

By watering bean plants (Phaseolus vulgaris) with a solution that contains conjugated oligomers, researchers at the Laboratory of Organic Electronics, have shown that the roots of the plant become electrically conducting and can store energy.

Publications

2024

Ilaria Abdel Aziz, Johannes Gladisch, Chiara Musumeci, Maximilian Moser, Sophie Griggs, Christina J. Kousseff, Magnus Berggren, Iain Mcculloch, Eleni Stavrinidou (2024) Electrochemical modulation of mechanical properties of glycolated polythiophenes Materials Horizons Continue to DOI
Daniela Parker, Abdul Manan Manan Dar, Adam Armada Moreira, Iwona Bernacka Wojcik, Rajat Rai, Daniele Mantione, Eleni Stavrinidou (2024) Biohybrid Energy Storage Circuits Based on Electronically Functionalized Plant Roots ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces Continue to DOI

2023

Vasileios Oikonomou, Miriam Huerta, Alexandra Sandéhn, Till Dreier, Yohann Daguerre, Hyungwoo Lim, Magnus Berggren, Eleni Pavlopoulou, Torgny Näsholm, Martin Bech, Eleni Stavrinidou (2023) eSoil: A low- power bioelectronic growth scaffold that enhances crop seedling growth Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 121, Article e2304135120 Continue to DOI
Adam Armada Moreira, Abdul Manan Manan Dar, Zifang Zhao, Claudia Cea, Jennifer Gelinas, Magnus Berggren, Alex Costa, Dion Khodagholy, Eleni Stavrinidou (2023) Plant electrophysiology with conformable organic electronics: Deciphering the propagation of Venus flytrap action potentials Science Advances, Vol. 9, Article eadh4443 Continue to DOI
Matteo Grenzi, Stefano Buratti, Ambra Selene Parmagnani, Ilaria Abdel Aziz, Iwona Bernacka Wojcik, Francesca Resentini, Jan Simura, Fabrizio Gandolfo Doccula, Andrea Alfieri, Laura Luoni, Karin Ljung, Maria Cristina Bonza, Eleni Stavrinidou, Alex Costa (2023) Long-distance turgor pressure changes induce local activation of plant glutamate receptor-like channels Current Biology, Vol. 33, p. 1019-+ Continue to DOI

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