09 October 2024

When the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2024 was to be announced, LiU Professor Henrik Pedersen was live on TV to give comments on the prize and the laureates.

Henrik Pedersen
Henrik Pedersen

In the beginning of autumn, Henrik Pedersen was contacted by SVT’s science editorial team. They were looking for a chemist who could comment on the announcement of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. They had received a tip from a chemist in Lund who often appears on TV.

"After a brief phone interview, they wanted me in the studio", says Henrik Pedersen.

What do you think about the winner?

"A fantastic and exciting prize! It’s great that the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences dared to award both the Physics and Chemistry prizes to machine learning. Proteins are really not my research field, but it’s incredibly exciting when you start thinking about what we can understand about proteins and do with proteins thanks to the research of this year’s Chemistry winner", says Henrik Pedersen.

Do you have a personal favorite you hope will win the prize someday?

"Yes, the inventor behind Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD), which I research, Tuomo Suntola. He invented ALD in 1974, and today it is an indispensable technology for the manufacturing of all chips in all the electronics we have.

Being on national TV was something Henrik Pedersen found enjoyable.

"It’s a really fun challenge to explain research so that everyone can understand without it becoming so simplified that it becomes ridiculous. Being live on TV in this way was really a great experience."

Contact

Latest news from LiU

Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert.

Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert is the next Moa Martinson Professor

Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert is a visual artist, researcher and a professor at the Cyprus University of Technology. Her research and artistic practice focus on museum studies and visual sociology, particular on photography and emerging technologies.

Thomas Keating at a table with a computer in front of him.

Highly radioactive nuclear waste – how to keep it from oblivion

Sweden’s radioactive nuclear waste will be stored in a sealed bedrock repository for 100,000 years. How can we ensure that it is not forgotten? Researchers at Linköping University have come up with a proposal.

Corinna Röver standing on a stair.

Reindeer husbandry in the shadow of war – then and now

Sweden’s NATO membership may entail increased military activity in Sami reindeer herding areas. One way of trying to predict the consequences of this is to look back in history. This is what a new research project at LiU will do.