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Overview

The scientific theme of this year's KBC DAYS is "Dynamic Worlds: Responses and Transformations from Molecules to Landscapes". With this theme, we invite participants to explore how systems across scales - from atoms, molecules and cells to organisms, ecosystems, and landscapes -sense, respond to, and are transformed by internal and external excitations. Beyond time-resolved change, dynamics is understood here as the interplay of interactions, constraints, and signals that shape systems across scales.

"Dynamic Worlds" provides a unifying framework for interdisciplinary research within the Chemical Biological Centre, fostering dialogue across life and materials sciences. By highlighting shared mechanisms and consequences of change in complex systems, the theme aims to inspire new connections, perspectives, and collaborations across different research fields.

We welcome newcomers, long-term KBC residents, and other curious researchers to learn about or update themselves on the research infrastructures available at KBC and Campus Umeå, get to know more about their services, and discuss potential projects!

You will also gain insights into what happened at KBC during the previous year by listening to exciting scientific talks from new faculty members of the KBC environment, awardees and researchers who received large grants in the past year, activities organised by the Umeå Postdoc Society (UPS) and presentations by PhD students and Forskaraspirant Programme students!

As usual, the KBC DAYS will bring researchers from different departments and scientific disciplines together, offering numerous opportunities to network, participate in engaging discussions, and generate new ideas and collaborations!

Keynote speakers

Claus Ropers, Professor, Director, Department of Ultrafast Dynamics, Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences, Göttingen, Germany

Curriculum Vitae
After studying physics at the University of Göttingen and the University of California, Berkeley (USA), Claus Ropers worked at the Max Born Institute in Berlin and received his doctorate at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in 2007. After a year as project leader at the Max Born Institute, he returned to the University of Göttingen in 2008, where he initially worked as a junior professor with tenure track, heading the research group Nano-Optics and Ultrafast Dynamics. In 2011, the University appointed him as professor at the age of only 34 years. Since 2013, he has held the professorship for Experimental Solid State Physics and has been managing director of the IV. Physical Institute – Solid State and Nanostructures since 2014. Director and Scientific Member at the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences.

Research Interests
The experimental physicist and his team investigate the structural, electronic, and magnetic dynamics in solids, nanostructures, and surfaces. Thereby, the researchers want to answer fundamental questions that are also of technological relevance: How do the complex properties of materials emerge? How do photovoltaic energy conversion processes take place? To do so, Ropers needs to develop new experiments. For his research, Ropers uses ultrafast electron microscopy – a field to which he has made a decisive contribution and in which he is one of the leading scientists worldwide.

Selected Awards
He has received numerous awards for his work, including the Carl Ramsauer Prize of the Physical Society of Berlin, the Walter Schottky Prize of the German Physical Society, the Klung Wilhelmy Science Prize, the Ernst Ruska Prize and the Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation.

Webpage:

Jordi Bascompte, Professor of Ecology, Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Switzerland

Jordi Bascompte is Professor of Ecology at the University of Zurich and Director of the PhD Program in Ecology. He is best known for having brought the interactions of mutual benefit between plants and animals into community ecology, at a time largely dominated by predation and competition. His application of network theory to the study of mutualism has identified general laws that determine the way in which species interactions shape biodiversity.

Jordi is one of the most highly-cited scientists according to Thompson Reuters. Among his distinctions are the European Young Investigator Award (2004), the Ecological Society of America’s George Mercer Award (2007), the Spanish National Research Award (2011), the British Ecological Society’s Marsh Book of the Year Award (2016), the Ramon Margalef Prize in Ecology (2021) and the Cozzarelli Prize of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (2025). Recipient of an ERC’s Advanced Grant, Jordi has served on the Board of Reviewing Editors of Science and has been the Ideas and Perspectives Editor at Ecology Letters. His books include Self-Organization in Complex Ecosystems (with R.V. Solé) and Mutualistic Networks (with P. Jordano), both published by Princeton University Press.

Jordi obtained a PhD in Biology at the University of Barcelona (1994), supervised by Ricard V. Solé. This was followed by a postdoctoral position in Steven Frank's laboratory at the University of California, Irvine (1996 and 1997). After that, he was awarded an independent postdoctoral fellowship at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS, 1998 and 1999). In 2000, he became Associate Professor (Full Professor from 2008) at the Doñana Biological Station, a center of the Spanish Research Council, where he was based until moving to Zurich in 2015.

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Ville Kaila, Professor of Biochemistry, Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Arrhenius Laboratories for Natural Sciences, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

Ville R. I. Kaila received his PhD in biochemistry in 2009 from University of Helsinki. He worked as an EMBO Long-Term Fellow at the Laboratory of Chemical Physics at the National Institutes of Health (2010-2013), after which he was appointed a professorship at the Technical University of Munich. In 2019, Kaila moved with his research group to Stockholm, where he is currently professor at the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at Stockholm University and a Wallenberg Scholar. His research focuses on elucidating mechanistic principles of bioenergetic protein complexes by integrative biophysical approaches. Besides his passion for research, Kaila is also a classical musician and actively performs as a violinist.

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Posters and short talks

Research infrastructures and research support functions are welcome to showcase their services through posters or roll-ups. If interested, please contact ainhoa.querejeta@ͯÑÕÊÓƵ. 

We strongly encourage PhD students and Forskaraspirant Programme students to present their research projects as posters. Students may also express interest in giving a short, 2-minute "elevator talk". Please note that the number of elevator talk slots is limited, and selection may be applied.

The poster format is A0 portrait (1189 mm tall and 841 mm wide).

Awards will be presented for both the Best Poster and the Best Elevator Talk.

20 October - deadline for PhD and Forskaraspirant Programme students to express their interest in presenting their projects.

30 October - abstract submission deadline for students' presentations.

Registration

Registration for the conference is free and includes access to two days of lectures, coffee and refreshments during breaks, and lunches on both days.

Participants are also welcome to join the conference dinner on Tuesday evening. A fee applies to dinner participants only: a 250 SEK contribution for local participants, while company representatives will be charged the full cost of the dinner. The applicable fee will be invoiced after registration.

Registration deadline: 27 October 23:59 

Register here:

/en/forms/kbc-days-2026/

Associated activities

Information about and pre-registration for the various activities organised in the framework of this year's KBC DAYS will be available on this webpage soon. Stay tuned for the email and digital screen announcements!

Organisers

Scientific Organisers

Stefan Björklund, Professor, Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics, Scientific Coordinator of KBC, Umeå University

Andreas Kohler, Assistant Professor, Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics, Umeå University

Gerard Rocher Ros, Assistant Professor, Department of Ecology, Environment and Geoscience, Umeå University

Nicolò Maccaferri, Associate Professor, Department of Physics, Umeå University

Nils Skoglund, Associate Professor, Department of Applied Physics and Electronics, Umeå University

Preeti Moar, Postdoctoral fellow, Department of Clinical Microbiology, Umeå University and Umeå Postdoc Society (UPS) 

Suresh Jesuthasan, Associate professor, Department of Molecular Biology, Umeå University

Susan McEvoy, Assistant Professor, Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology, Umeå Plant Sciences Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU)

Conference Organisers

Stefan Björklund, Professor, Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics, Scientific coordinator of KBC, Umeå University

Anna Shevtsova, Communications Officer, Chemical Biological Centre (KBC), Umeå University

Ingrid Söderbergh, Research coordinator, Umeå Centre for Microbial Research (UCMR), Umeå University

Ainhoa Querejeta, Coordinator, SciLifeLab Site Umeå

Sponsors and exhibitors

Contact