Karolina Mothander
My name is Karolina Mothander and I’m from a town called Umeå in the north-ern part of Sweden. I moved to Lund to study physics and biology and, studied biophysics during my master. During my master thesis I studied the behaviour of retinal glial cells on nanowires using a Phase Holographic microscope. The micro-scope was placed in the incubator and I could monitor the cells for a long period of time, and could follow the cells while they moved and divided.
In my SwedNESS project I will study the interaction between nanowires and lipid bilayers. I will primarily use GISANS and reflectometry to study the thickness and coverage of the lipid bilayer on the nanowires. The lipid covered nanowires will later be used as a curved model membrane to study the interaction with cells, where receptors are anchored on the model membrane. The nanowires allows for control over the area of contact between the lipid bilayer and the cell, and also the number of contact areas per cell.

University: Lund University
Thesis title: Grazing incidence small angle neutron scattering as a tool to study curved biomembranes on nanostructured surfaces