In 2015 I started my bachelor’s in biology at the University of Oslo (UiO). There I quickly fell in love with macroalgae and decided that I wanted to continue with a master’s in marine biology with specialization in phycology. In June 2020, I defended my master thesis about biodiversity and ecological changes over 50 years in algal communities in Southern Norway. After finishing this work, I decided that I wanted to look more into the utilization of Norwegian macroalgal species, since I am very interested in algae as food and feed.
I then started to work at Sintef Industry, which has a lot of projects concerning the growing kelp industry in Norway, and after some months here, I was offered to take a PhD connected to the Norwegian Seaweed Biorefinery Platform (SBP-N). This is a collaboration between NTNU, Sintef, NMBU, Møreforsking and Nofima, and the aim of the platform is to serve as a hub for research, knowledge, methodology and stakeholder networks within the Norwegian seaweed industry. My research focus will be on the biological activity from bioactive compounds in macroalgal species interesting for future utilization, and the extraction and characterization of these. The aim of my work is to investigate if a structure-function relationship is present in the extracted compounds, and if the biological effect can be altered with different biotic and abiotic variables, such as species, wild growing vs. cultivated specimens, growth depth, harvest time, wave exposure and geographical location.
