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Welcome to the Swedish NMR Centre Arthur! Could you briefly say something about your background and how it is you came here to the NMR Centre?

Thanks for welcoming me to the NMR center, it’s a pleasure to be in charge of the DNP system! I completed my Master degree at the Ecole Normale Supérieur de Lyon, France. Then, I performed my PhD at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland, where I used MAS DNP NMR methods to understand spin diffusion processes in materials and pharmaceutical formulations, with a heavy collaboration with Staffan Schantz from AstraZeneca Gothenburg. I then performed a two-years post-doctoral fellowship at the Danish Technical University in Copenhagen working on new generations of radicals for dissolution DNP for hyperpolarized MRI applications. I love to work with solid-state DNP and I really enjoyed demonstrating to the pharmaceutical community how solid-state DNP could answer many of their questions. This is why coming to Gothenburg seemed like a natural continuation of my career.

What is your most exciting scientific moment so far in your career?

During my PhD, we found a way to hyperpolarize bulk nuclei inside inorganic materials. Before performing the experiment, I managed to run numerical simulations, to predict what the signal time evolution would look like if the process experimentally worked. I predicted an increasing then decreasing signal (Figure 1D, blue curve ). Fortunately, we measured the exact same shape as the one predicted by my simulations. This made me very happy and confident with what I was doing.

What new areas of research do you foresee will be possible and where you and the NMR Centre can contribute using the 400 DNP system?

DNP is now becoming increasingly friendly with biological samples, nanoscience and inorganic materials are also becoming more eager to use DNP as a characterisation method.

What are your ambitions with the position at the NMR Centre?

One of my goals is to make the Swedish as well as other international scientific communities aware that they can move towards DNP for answering their interrogations. DNP deserves to be more famous!

And finally, could you share something on what you like to do in your spare time?

I enjoy doing sports: climbing, running, gymnastics, biking. Anything that involves being active is a big yes.

Reference:

Björgvinsdóttir S, Walder BJ, Pinon AC, Emsley L. Bulk Nuclear Hyperpolarization of Inorganic Solids by Relay from the Surface. Journal of the American Chemical Society 2018, 140:7946-7951, .