Author: jasingst@ntnu.no

To deal with urgent global challenges, such as climate change, we need to communicate outside our usual social groups.

Imagine weighing twice as much as you do now and 50% of your body mass consisting of fat. In this condition, you must cycle for eleven days straight without stopping once to rest, drink, or eat. After this strenuous journey you have to make sure that you look your best, because as soon as you arrive, you need to mate. Time is ticking; after eight weeks you will need to cycle all the way back home!

One and half year ago, four young scholars from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology started Skarv Technologies AS, a company delivering software- and hardware solutions for marine autonomous robotic systems. Among the four founders, are Nansen Legacy postdoctoral fellow Petter Norgren and Nansen Legacy PhD student Tore Mo-Bjørkelund.

Ingrid Hallsteinsen is an associate professor at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. She joined NTNU in November 2020.

Hi. My name is Kana. In summer 2020, I started my PhD at the Department of Biological Sciences Ålesund (IBA). Here I am working on projects to study the interaction between salmon group behaviour and various environmental factors at coastal sea cages. This is a part of the InnoSEA project at IBA. In my projects, salmon behaviour refers to their swimming patterns, schooling, jumping, avoidance of certain depths or areas inside sea cages, and so on.

We’ve studied 140 hotels in Norway and Sweden, and found that CO2 heat pumps in hotels can reduce thermal energy consumption by about 60%.

To fix a cooling problem in for example electronic devices, we have experimented with a carpet of nano-wires. Guess what, it works.

Who hasn’t seen the oil covered seabirds and big-eyed otters in the news after massive oil spills like Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon? The images represent how oil production can impact the marine environment and are visually powerful. Oil covered zooplankton may not be equally heartbreaking – but it should be. Exposure to toxic oil compounds during critical life phases of low trophic level copepods have the potential to shift entire ecosystem dynamics.

Life is thriving in the Arctic beneath ice. At the base of the food web is Ice algae. They are an important food source for life in the arctic sea, and flourish in this extreme environment. Modern technology gives us exciting possibilities to learn more about them and how they have adapted to their environment.