Research projects
Below you will find all our ongoing research projects divided into thematic focus areas, which are currently:
At the end of the list under each area, you will also find a link to completed projects since 2022.
INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Within the research area of Innovation and entrepreneurship, we focus amongst other things on innovation in conservative development contexts and markets, interorganizational network perspectives on innovation, and innovation and implementation management.
Additive manufacturing for the life sciences; Bioprinting and Implementation
Two sub-projects within the competence center with the same name that is funded by VINNOVA and led by Uppsala University. The competence center brings together more than 20 partners in academia, industry and the public sector to support competence and research development in the field of life science.
On the website of the competence center Additive manufacturing for the life sciences, you can read more about the sub-project Bioprinting and the sub-project Implementation
PLATINEA - Platform for innovation of existing antibiotics
PLATINEA is a multisectorial collaboration platform with the aim to preserve and enhance the value of existing antibiotics. PLATINEA is financed by VINNOVA and consists of 15 partners from academia, authorities, industry and healthcare. The platform is divided into four work packages (WP 1-4) which handle various issues in the field of antibiotics, which are coordinated by a fifth work package (WP5). The common goal is to ensure that the antibiotics available today are used in the best way and to ensure accessibility to important antibiotics that risk disappearing from Sweden. Read more about PLATINEA on the project's website.
Knowledge integration in hospital construction projects – how to build hospitals for the future?
Building hospitals is a complex task and requires joint knowledge development regarding how healthcare needs of today as well as of tomorrow can be translated into technical building solutions. A fundamental question is how to best integrate the knowledge required from several actors (contractors, clients, users, technical disciplines, etc.) in construction projects. The study aims to understand what knowledge is used and integrated in hospital projects and identify how partnering can contribute to knowledge integration.
Read more about the project on how to build hospitals for the future.
Measuring the effect of publishing and using open data in Sweden
The goal of this project is to check and evaluate existing impact measurement models and indexes and then create a model to measure impact of open data in Sweden. There are many open data measurement models that compare openness of databases between countries, counties and organizations but there is no a proper and comprehensive model to measure the social and financial impact.
Read more about the project on open data.
Test demoinnovation platform for material and advanced manufacturing
The purpose of the project is to map and analyze the conditions for building a test demo innovation platform (TDIP) with a focus on materials and advanced production with a special focus on additive manufacturing. The work is based on the investments that are made and the positive development that takes place around additive manufacturing in the Uppsala region. The project is based on collaboration with the Uppsala Region, companies in relevant technology areas both within and outside Uppsala, representatives of municipalities in the region and relevant authorities.
Read more about the test demoinnovation platform project for material and advanced manufacturing
More research projects in the field of innovation
- Building and running a competence center in Additive Manufacturing in Life Sciences: Project description: Longitudinal study of building and running a competence center. Data will be collected through continuous surveys and qualitative interviews. The project will be carried out between 2020-2024. Principal investigator: Anders Brantnell
Sustainability and Ethics
Within the research area of Sustainability and Ethics, we study sustainable transitions, social marketing and business models for sustainability, sustainable entrepreneurship, and the ethics of technological development and maintenance.
USER - A smart electricity grid will never be smarter than its users!
USER - Uppsala Smart Energy Research group – carries out a number of research projects in light of the recognition that a smart grid will never be smarter than its users. The overall aim of USER is to increase general knowledge on electricity consumers’ and prosumers’ role in bringing to fruition the vision of future smart grids. The research focuses mainly on user behavior and sociotechnical aspects of flexible demand, but also decentralized generation, storage and electric vehicles as well as products and services associated therewith.
Read more about USER's research project on the smart electricity grids of the future
FINEST - Food Innovation Enabling Sustainable Transition
FINEST is a national center where RISE, Chalmers University of Technology and Uppsala University are included together with 15 actors in the Swedish food industry, with the aim of creating conditions for innovations that lead to an environmentally, socially and economically sustainable food sector. The Division of Industrial Engineering and Management leads work package 1, which will create a systemic understanding of the food system, primarily concerning the three central value chains within FINEST.
Read more about the project FINEST
LEAPFROG - innovation management for societal transformation
LEAPFROG runs several research projects in collaboration with societal actors to contribute to an innovative transformation of society for increased sustainability. The focus of many research projects is collaboration with public organizations in different roles of societal change. The work is largely based on action research and the overall aim is to increase understanding of enablers and obstacles for public organizations to transform and raise their impact for a sustainable future.
See list of research projects run by LEAPFROG
E-waste
E-waste is a growing problem globally and the EU is drafting legislation for a Right to Repair (R2R) to address this issue. The R2R needs to cover both physical and digital repairs in order to be effective. This project studies the term "repair" as it relates to software and digital R2R, using theories and methods from Science and Technology Studies and Sustainability Transitions. The project aims to identify barriers to a digital R2R and will analyze the effectiveness of upcoming EU legislative proposals.
Research leader: Per Fors
Management control for sustainable development at Region Gotland
Sustainable development is central to Region Gotland's development strategy in 2040. In the management control system of Region Gotland, however, a control system is applied where sustainability is only partially integrated. Against this background, the Technical Administration intends, for the first time and in collaboration with the researchers in this project, to develop, establish and implement a sustainability budget in 2022. This sustainability budget shall complement the existing control system and contribute to sustainability governance at the Technical Administration. I.a. the budget shall include targets and monitoring of CO2 emissions.
Read more about the project "Management control for sustainable development at Region Gotland" (in Swedish)
Sustainable arctic cruise communities: From practice to governance
Arctic cruise tourism is an important industry to facilitate blue growth. However, given the negative environmental and societal impacts, our objective is to provide Arctic cruise communities with a toolkit for sustainable cruise tourism development to promote a transition towards sustainable cruise visits and thereby support the development of meaningful livelihoods for residents. We aim to achieve this by studying how cruise stakeholders govern challenges resulting from cruise visits and how they safeguard a sustainable future for Arctic cruise communities.
Project member from our division: Ulrika Persson-Fischier
Read more about the project Sustainable arctic cruise communities on Nord University's website
Sustainable visits to Rapa Nui: Glocal perspectives
This project explores the relationship between cultural heritage management, legislation, indigeneity and social, economic and environmental issues on Rapa Nui as a major tourist site. Collaborations with Rapanui researchers and local people on the current development of tourism and social, economic and environmental sustainability in Rapa Nui will contribute to an in-depth understanding of local Rapa Nui circumstances, that have relevance for similar issues on a global scale.
Read more about the project on sustainable visits to Rapa Nui.
Cultural heritage in regional development strategies
This project explores the role cultural heritage plays in regional development strategies and EU financed project. Previous research indicates that the cultural heritage sector and regional development work according to different logics. The aim of this project is to use a national perspective to explore what effects this has on the possibilities to use cultural heritage for innovations for regional development and smart specialization, for example within the tourism sector. By identifying good examples we will spread knowledge that can increase the possibilities of the sector.
Read more about the project on cultural heratage in regional development strategies.
Sustainable tourism in the new normal
The world is facing a serious crisis, and the tourism business is one of the worst hit industries. The covid-19 pandemic has enforced a halt to the world´s frenetic travelling, and offered us a possibility to reflect over our choices, an invitation to tourists and the industry to rethink our possibilities and to adjust to more sustainable practices in the new normal that will come after covid 19. The aim with this project is to take the experiences generated by tourism companies during the pandemic, to develop new knowledge to reach a more sustainable development of tourism after the crisis.
Read more about the project on sustainable tourism in the new normal.
Teaching Entrepreneurship for Sustainability
This project studies the intersection between entrepreneurship and sustainability, as they are addressed in higher education. In a collaboration between Uppsala university, Nord universitet in Norway and Rijksuniversitet Groningen in the Netherlands, we investigate where strategies for entrepreneurship and sustainability coincide, strengthen and create synergies, and where – possibly – they divert or even contradict one another. We explore pedagogical theories, best practices as well as create a teaching module, test run and evaluate it.
Read more about the project "Teaching Entrepreneurship for Sustainability".
VAMOS: Virtual exchange to tackle wicked problems: Latin American and European collaboration on education for sustainable development
VAMOS brings together eight universities and one NGO for an exchange of good practice in internationalization, virtual teaching and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). The consortium will develop a virtual course in which students from all partner universities will work with the local/global sustainability issues (Wicked Problems). Main objective: To build capacity for innovative international collaboration and joint learning, with a focus on learning spaces for ESD and for virtual exchange (VE) courses/projects addressing SDG issues.
Read more about the VAMOS-project.
Rule-based Life-cycle assessment from BIM model
Property owners, developers and contractors are investing resources in creating well-developed BIM models in their construction projects. At the same time, there are requirements to calculate the climate impact in different construction phases. This project aims to create a scalable flow to enable climate calculation based on BIM models.
Read more about the project "Rule-based Life-cycle assessment from BIM model"
More research projects in the field of sustainability and ethics
- Ethics across the curriculum: This project aims at developing, reflecting upon, and integrating “ethics streams”, which merge existing course specific material with current engineering ethics pedagogy and research, across the curriculum. Beginning with the Industrial engineering and management and Industrial analytics programmes primarily, the project aims for a long-term development of ethics within the faculty.
- Fishing for sustainability: This project investigates the conditions for sustainable fishing tourism on Gotland. Ulrika Persson-Fischier explores how other stakeholders than commercial tourism actors (subsistence fishers) view fishing, to understand the conditions for social acceptance of commercial recreational fishing, and hence sustainable fishing tourism on Gotland. Read more about the project "Fishing for sustainability"
- Alternative Entrepreneurship:What paths will future innovative business and technology development take? This question is answered by research on alternative forms of entrepreneurship, such as sustainable, green and social entrepreneurship.
Principal Investigator: Annika Skoglund - Ethics and Sustainability in the Peer-to-Peer Economy:The P2P economy, including the sharing economy, has potential to contribute to sustainable development. This project is focusing on how organisations within the P2P economy work with questions related to sustainability and ethics.
Research leader: Per Fors
INDUSTRIAL ANALYTICS
Within the research area of Industrial Analytics, we focus on the role data analytics and artificial intelligence can play to optimize and improve operations in a variety of industries.
EXPlainable and Learning production & logistics by Artificial INtelligence (EXPLAIN)
The overall aim of the EXPLAIN project is to increase the profitability, sustainability, and competitiveness of the Swedish manufacturing industry. The project conducts research and development of a new generation of interactive and innovative fusion of virtual production modeling methods and machine learning algorithms for decision-making support and increasing knowledge and competence within the production systems lifecycle. EXPLAIN will target cases on production planning and control with humans-in-the-loop, wherein complex multi-criteria decisions are to be made, including energy and resource efficiency.
Read more about the project EXPLAIN.
Computer guided discovery and analysis of drug combination candidates by means of large-scale cell culture experiments
This project aims at personalized drug treatment selection and accelerated drug combination discovery and analysis. Data are collected in large-scale cell culture experiments, where human cells are exposed to single compounds and chemical mixtures with a focus on Glioblastoma Multiforme (brain cancer). The expected result is the first experimental-computational infrastructure of its kind for evaluation of drug combination candidates, going beyond cell viability measurements by collecting also molecular and morphological readouts.
Read more about the project "Computer guided discovery and analysis of drug combination candidates by means of large-scale cell culture experiments".
Auto-Aeroponics: Automated optimal indoor cultivation without sun, soil and pesticides
This project is about the scientific, industrial and societal potential of automatic aeroponic indoor cultivation of plants. This means that the roots of the plants are hanging freely in the air and that they are repeatedly sprayed with a nutrition solution. The goal is to investigate what is the potential regarding: (1) Adjusting the growth condition (eg temperature, light intensity, aur humidity, spray frequency) to maximize for example the growth speed. (2) Automate and scale up the automated cultivation method to commercially competitive levels.