A Nobel laureate and several neuro-and nanoscience academic stars will come to NTNU on Thursday. Kavli Day offers valuable inspiration for specialist scientists, but everyone is welcome to come and hear elite scientists talk about their groundbreaking research.
Inspiration. Bjørn Torger Stokke, a professor at the Department of Physics and host of the nanotechnology symposium scheduled for Thursday.Sølvi W. Normannsen
The Kavli Prize Laureate in Nanoscience, Nadrian Seeman
A source of inspiration. This is the MC Escher woodcut "Depth", which helped give Nadrian Seeman the idea of constructing a three-dimensional lattice of DNA.
The Kavli Prize Laureate in Neuroscience Thomas Südhof
The Kavli Prize Laureate in Neuroscience Richard H. Scheller.
Pleased. Professor Edvard Moser is happy that Kavli Prize Week is also celebrated outside the capital city -even if he has to be content with just one Kavli Day at the university.Geir Mogen/NTNU DMF
Kavli Prize Week opened in Oslo yesterday, with three parallel Kavli Prize symposia in astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience. Then it’s non-stop in the capital until Wednesday, with symposia, awards from HM King Harald V, a banquet, a grand gala and even celebrities. On Thursday, Kavli Prize Week will be celebrated at NTNU with a Kavli Day in Trondheim.
Four of this year's award winners will come to Trondheim: Nadrian Seeman and Donald Eigler, both Kavli Nanoscience Laureates, and Thomas Südhof and Richard Scheller who have been awarded the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience.
Great inspiration
“It is wonderful that they are coming here. We hope it serves as a great source of inspiration for the different disciplines. They come from the super leagues, which can seem very far from where we are, but it also gives us something to strive for.” So says Bjørn Torger Stokke, a professor at the Department of Physics who will chair the nanotechnology symposium that will be held in Thursday afternoon, after the official Kavli Day event. He notes that it is not just the Kavli Prize winners who will present important research that day. The nanotechnology conference, for example, also features presentations by Anja Boisen from the Technical University of Denmark, Charles Lieber from Harvard and Lars Samuelson of Lund University.
Nadrian Seeman from New York University and Donald Eigler of IBM Almaden Research Center in California are being honoured for their new methods of handling nanoparticles, which are artificially created particles consisting of a collection of atoms from 1 to 100 nanometres in diameter. A nanometre is a billionth of a metre.
Great discoveries often start with coincidences.
Wikipedia says that Seeman’s breakthrough had its origins in the autumn of 1980, when he was in a pub on campus where a copy of the woodcut “Depth” by the famous Dutch graphic artist MC Escher hung on the wall. That got Seeman – who was then working in biochemistry -- thinking about the idea that it might be possible to construct a three-dimensional lattice of DNA. This laid the foundation for a new branch of nanotechnology, where DNA is used as a building block. In 1991, Seeman and his group reported that they had made the first three-dimensional nanoscale object, a cube made of DNA.
While Seeman was the first to begin using DNA as a building block in nanotechnology, Donald Eigler was the first scientist who managed to move atoms one by one and put them in a new location. Eigler’s employer, IBM, writes of his research, “It should surprise no one that a man who restores cars in his spare time would be adept at taking apart and building other mechanisms too.”
That’s exactly what Eigler did, in a groundbreaking way in 1989 – with the help of a scanning tunnelling microscope that had sufficient resolution to distinguish individual atoms. Eigler managed to slide a total 35 atoms one by one over a zinc-plated surface to spell out the name of his employer, IBM. Later he refined the method so that atoms could also be lifted from the surface and moved.
According to Professor Arne Skjeltorp, who is chairman of The Kavli Prize Committee in Nanoscience, Eigler’s research can be seen as the start of nanotechnology.
The Kavli Prize is a relatively new award, and is being given out this year for the second time. According to the creator of the awards, the Norwegian-born physicist, philanthropist and billionaire Fred Kavli, the prizes have been established to give recognition to truly outstanding scientists, “whose research has fundamentally and profoundly advanced our understanding of astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience.”
“The selection is made by an international committee, and the prize money is substantial. Hopefully the Kavli Prize will someday be perceived as being as prestigious as the Nobel Prize is now. Nevertheless, it is the highest distinction in these fields, even though it can be a challenge that there can be overlap in relation to the Nobel Prize - for example in physics and chemistry,” says Professor Bjørn Torger Stokke.
A short history of nearly everything
While NTNU and Trondheim get their piece of the Kavli Prize pie on Thursday, Kavli Prize Week will be felt in Oslo over the next several days. In addition to the high academic celebrity factor, the organizers have also sought to attract a wider audience by featuring well-known authors and celebrities.
One of them is the best-selling author Bill Bryson, whose travel books have sold in the mega-editions. Now he has written "A short history of nearly everything", in which he seeks to describe the history of science from the Big Bang to the present day. This book will provide the theme for the two lectures he will give, one at the University of Oslo campus at Blindern and one at the Literature House in Oslo.
The forum is something new for the Kavli Prize, and features ten global leaders with great influence on research policy in the United States, Europe and Asia. The assignment for the group is to discuss the importance of international research cooperation.
Among the speakers is John P. Holdren, Science Advisor to President Barack Obama and Director of the United States Office of Science and Technology Policy.
“These events, which attract big names to events associated with the award ceremony, contribute to increased attention to research. It is clear that this is important. The Kavli Prize has great influence,” says Professor Jon Storm-Mathisen. Storm-Mathisen is a neuroscientist and chairman of the committee that awarded the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience to Thomas Südhof at Stanford University School of Medicine, Richard Schelle at the biotechnology company Genentech and James Rothman at Yale University.
The brain at the molecular level
The three neuroscience researchers have been recognized for their efforts to establish the exact molecular basis for the transmission of signals between nerve cells in the brain.
“In the understanding of what's happening in the contact points between neurons – the synapses – this is the key to understanding how the brain works,” says Professor Edvard Moser, who heads the only Kavli Institute in Norway, the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience.
Moser is pleased that Kavli Prize Week is also being celebrated outside the capital, even if it is just one day at NTNU.
“It is very stimulating for our scientific milieu to get the best brain researchers here in Trondheim every other year,” he says.
In addition to the lectures given by the visiting scientists, the event allows for academic exchanges and a tour of the laboratories. Thomas Südhof has expressed a strong desire to have a tour of the CBM lab. He would also like to witness an experiment -- if time allows.
“It is important for us to meet them. Their work is directly relevant to almost everything we're working on here, and now we will have the opportunity to make contact and ask them questions. I already have a large number of questions I want to ask,” says Moser.
Nobel Laureate Kandel
Moser and his Kavli Institute colleague, co-director and wife May-Britt will also be deeply involved with the visit of the professors/married couple Denise and Eric R. Kandel of Columbia University. The Kandels will open the neuroscience symposium with a popular science Kavli Lecture. The theme is, “There is life after the Nobel Prize: A molecular genetic approach to the gateway theory of drug abuse.”
Eric R. Kandel received the Nobel Prize in Physiology / Medicine in 2000 for his research on how the many nerve cells in the brain communicate with each other and send signals around in the nerve cell network. Kandel has demonstrated how changes in this signal transmission are essential for learning and memory.
Denise Kandel is a professor of sociomedical sciences in psychiatry at Columbia and a Research Scientist in the Department of Psychiatry, New York State Psychiatric Institute, who has laid the scientific foundation for the gateway theory of drug use. Put simply, the gateway theory says that young people who use nicotine and alcohol switch to use stronger drugs and narcotics to a far greater extent than youths who do not use nicotine and alcohol first.
“The Kavli Prize Laureates combined with Eric and Denise Kandel are an intellectual feast for us. These are the top people, the cream of the cream,” says Professor May-Britt Moser.
Pleased. Professor Edvard Moser is happy that Kavli Prize Week is also celebrated outside the capital city -even if he has to be content with just one Kavli Day at the university.
![](https://image.universitetsavisa.no/178899.webp?imageId=178899&width=960&height=548&format=jpg "A source of inspiration. This is the MC Escher woodcut "Depth", which helped give Nadrian Seeman the idea of constructing a three-dimensional lattice of DNA.")
