Om Umeå Plant Science Centre (UPSC)

UPSC är ett centrum för experimentell växtforskning och bildades 1999 i ett samarbete mellan institutionen för skoglig genetik och växtfysiologi vid SLU (Sveriges Lantbruksuniversitet) och institutionen för fysiologisk botanik vid Umeå Universitet. UPSC är ett “center of excellence” och en av Europas mest framstående forskningsmiljöer för växtforskning. UPSC är nu ett av norra Europas främsta miljöer för växtbiologisk forskning.

Vid UPSC arbetar ca 170 personer av 37 olika nationaliteter.

För mer information, se övriga sidor på detta website (på Engelska)

UPSC is a centre of experimental plant biology in Umeå.

In 1999 The Department of Plant Physiology at Umeå University (UmU) and the Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) joined to create Umeå Plant Science Centre (UPSC). This was initially only a “virtual centre”, with both departments located in different buildings on the campus, but with coordinated teaching, PhD education and seminar series.

In 2001 the two departments moved together to create a common scientific environment and new facilities – in particular a new growth facility – were constructed. Although now housed together in the same building, UPSC remains administratively split between the two universities and each department has its own head of department (prefekt) and all employees officially belong to one of the universities. To balance this split administration, a common board has been appointed by the two universities and is responsible for the scientific environment, common infrastructure and platforms, common applications and joint courses, and the “brandmark” of UPSC.

Research within UPSC is organized in research groups of variable size, each led by a competely independent principal investigator (PI) or group leader, who is either a full professor, associate professor (universitetslektor) or assistant professor (forskarassistent). Each PI has hers/his own research agenda and the PIs present the research of their respective groups in their homepages.

We have a long tradition of extensive collaboration between research groups within the centre and in addition to the PIs employed at the two departments that make up UPSC, several researchers are affiliated to UPSC as “associate PIs” and their research is also described.

Much effort has been spent to organize the infrastructure and equipment into common platforms and resources that all UPSC researchers can use. Most of this is financed by external grants, and UPSC has successfully competed in many larger calls for “Centres of Excellence”, and some of these Centres are also presented, as well as the internationalization and educational programs.