Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)

Dr. Hansen is professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at the Department of Pharmacy, University of Oslo, where he leads research in stereoselective synthesis of specialized pro-resolving mediators and their analogs.

Professor Hansen earned his Bachelor and Masters of Science from the University of Trondheim, followed by his PhD from the Agricultural University of Norway.

After early work as a research scientist at Sintef Research and the Postdoctoral Fellowship at University of Vaudo, he spent time as visiting scientist at the Scripps Research Institute in the laboratory of Nobel laureate K. Barry Sharpless.

His independent research has focused on the total synthesis and structural conformation of key specialized pro-resolving mediators, particularly the proctectin family and N3-DPA derived resolvents, proctectins and mericins, as well as the design of metabolically more stable analogs such as 3-oxa-PD1-N3-DPA.

Facial recognition for salmon.

Norwegian researchers Sintef and NTNU adapted face recognition to fish.

In a cage with over 100,000 salmon, picking out a specific hundred, about 96% success.

Then a company, Cermak, runs it so each fish gets its own health record, sea lice mostly.

So...

After this, I sort of took some classes of math and found out that I wanted to become a programmer and went to NTNU, the school that you talked about.

And I met a few courses of...

Like, it started out with 3D maths.

Before we started recording, I shared that we noticed your work through this summer's NOR-AI and NAIL-AI seminar series hosted by the Norwegian Research Center for AI Innovation and the Norwegian OpenAI Lab.

Can you tell us a bit about the seminar series, what you spoke about, and give us a feel for what types of interesting conversations you had at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology?

We're doing a number of things in trying to employ artificial intelligence in genomics right now, both on the immunological side and also on the more strictly genomic side.

And the work that we recently submitted is the development of an architecture that is inherently explainable to use AI basically as a discovery tool rather than a prediction tool.

All right.

It was a, it was this, like, massive investment project into fluoro-free waxes that Norway was doing going into Trondheim World Champs and it was this, like, partnership with NTNU, I think, and it was, like, multiple tens of million dol- like kroner.

Oh, crazy.

So, like-

Years ago, they took a look at the traditional warehouses filled with forklifts, wide walking aisles, and empty spaces, and asked a deceptively simple question: what if we take away the air, stack everything like a giant Rubik's cube, and let an AI swarm run around on top? Joining Marie Jansen and me today is Jonas Nil jacobsen.

Jonas holds a master degree in mechanical engineering and entrepreneurship from the NTNU, runs a half-marathon faster than most parcel delivery vans, and spent years understanding the algorithmic router engine that stops hundreds of warehouse robots from playing high-speed bumper cars.

[upbeat music] Welcome to the Data Powered Innovation Jam, Jonas.

The topic of this podcast being how math and cubes beat warehouse chaos.

But why is cursive back in vogue? Many advocates cite science.

One study from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology compared the brain activity of children and young adults when they were writing in cursive, drawing, and typing.

It found that handwriting and drawing light up areas of the brain associated with learning and memory.

Other studies have shown that cursive has other benefits, including boosting reading skills and spelling.

Does it impact how much you're actually taking in based on how you're writing down that information? And so the main person studying this is Audrey Van der Meer and her husband Ruud Custers.

I'm probably pronouncing that wrong, but I just think their names are great, at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

And there was a study that got very widely reported a couple of years ago where they got 36 students who were in their early 20s, so again, another example of a fairly small study.

Mm.