“It all started with the sudden realisation during a lecture while I was an exchange student in Scotland during the early 1990s. The lecturer, who was a laser specialist, arrived one day at the auditorium and was waxing lyrical over the fact that the laser he had developed was now being used in a robot in the Gulf War. I felt there and then that this was not really the direction in which I wanted my interest in and knowledge about lasers to develop."
 
When Fredrik returned to Sweden from his studies in Scotland, he changed course and instead used his expertise on lasers in combination with biological processes and photo-synthesis. He started studying biophysics and adopted a technical stance when examining biological processes. Following his Master of Science in Engineering he abandoned laser technology, primarily because his biggest challenge at the time was to understand why the protein he was studying was destroyed in contact with an outer surface.
 
At this stage in Fredrik´s research career, he met up with Bengt Kasemo and Michael Rodahl, two prominent researchers and professors in the field of biomedical research, and it was with the support of these two people that Fredrik started working on his doctoral thesis.

Background and career
Fredrik relates that he comes from a background where nobody in his family had ever had a long university education.
 
“While still at secondary school I took a gap year and worked at a chemical company, and it was there that I discovered that the people who had the best jobs were those who had university degrees in chemistry or physics. I´ve always found maths easy and was given the opportunity to help out with a variety of things there, and it was probably then that I made up my mind," relates Fredrik.
 
He finished secondary school and applied to university to study both architecture and physics. He was accepted for physics and looking back today he feels that was the right path to choose.
 
“During my education, the prime motive was the freedom of choice we got, both during the course itself and bearing in mind what was waiting when we entered our working careers. In fact, it was this freedom of choice and the chance to teach that persuaded me to take a doctor´s degree. I was spurred on by a desire to understand how things work, and my interest in biology was reawakened," recalls Fredrik.
 
The doctoral thesis that Fredrik wrote, in close cooperation with Michael Rodahl, resulted in a patent that later formed the foundation of a company called Q-Sense. Fredrik feels that it is this combination — research and private enterprise — that is the key to his rapid and successful research career.
 
“It wasn´t very common to start a company while working as a researcher, and at that time it was not always regarded as socially acceptable to do so, although that attitude was beginning to change back then," relates Fredrik.
 
In the beginning, it was mainly Michael who drove development of the product, a quartz-based scale that measures bio-molecular interaction with surfaces, while Fredrik continuously used the technology in his research and wrote scientific articles based on the instrument´s high performance. The company did well and Q-Sense´s strategy was to launch the instrument and sell it to highly reputable laboratories the world over.
 
It was through his work at Q-Sense that Fredrik redirected his research towards diagnostics and in the next stage, led to Fredrik´s doctoral thesis having the largest printing run in Sweden and his articles being widely quoted all over the world.
 
“I´ve never experienced envy among my colleagues despite my successes and my swift career take-off," says Fredrik, “and I believe this is because people are seldom envious of those who work hard. If I´d been lazy and just strolled through all this yet still achieved the same success, I´m pretty sure the situation would have been different," he adds.
 
Fredrik relates that he had a couple of tough years when he defended his dissertation because it was at the same time that he became a father and tried to take some paternal leave.
 
“If there´s anything in my career that I would do differently today, it´s the fact that I worked so hard at the same time as I tried to take parental leave, but as things were at that time, I didn´t feel I had the opportunity to choose one or the other," he explains.
 
Work as a professor
In his work as a professor, Fredrik supervises a group of researchers/post-graduate students and it is the work of this research group that results in articles, publications and new lectures. The post-grad students “train" together with their supervisor to eventually become independent researchers and ultimately run their own research programmes.

Fredrik´s research group works with surface-based sensors, developing them to resemble a cell surface or a lipid membrane. This work has progressed since they began about ten years ago and now the team is working to enable these sensors to deliver faster and more precise diagnoses. For instance for use in detecting viral infections .
 
Fredrik explains that it is only a matter of time before a pandemic spreads throughout the world, and it may well be virus-borne, like a bacteria-borne pandemic, since resistance to antibiotics has increased so significantly. It is for this reason that it he feels it is necessary to develop faster virus detection and swifter diagnosis of various bacterial strains — and to do so in the very near future. The challenge lies in being able to identify what type of virus it is, for instance, and in being able to do so as conveniently as using a simple pH probe (a pH probe measures the acidity of fluids or other substances). This type of surface-based sensor is Fredrik´s and his research group´s specialty, but this kind of sensor probe is still only a vision towards which they are working.
 
“I have an immensely enjoyable job and I find it very rewarding to work with younger people. I see myself in the young post-grad students with whom I work and I believe everyone agrees we are in a situation which we all feel is fun. Research aimed at a joint goal while working in a group can be a highly creative process," relates Fredrik.