Portrait photo of Petra Marhava with plants in the backgroundPhoto: Peter Marhavy

Kungliga Skytteanska Samfundet announced this week that Petra Marhava, new group leader at UPSC, will receive a prize for young, outstanding researchers. The prize is assigned to the Faculty of Forest Sciences at SLU and is given out once per year.

Petra Marhava started to work at UPSC in September 2020 as researcher affiliated with Stéphanie Robert’s group at the Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology. Since this month, she is officially group leader at UPSC and is now starting to set up her own research group which will investigate how plants deal with temperature stress.

Kungl. Skytteanska Samfundet motivated their choice with Petra Marhava’s exceptionally well publishing record in high-ranking journals and her successful grant applications. End of 2021, she managed to get funding from the Swedish Research Council and a very prestigious Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). They also highlighted in their motivation that Petra Marhava’s research covers a cutting-edge topic with respect to climate change and expected temperature variations.

Every year, Kungl. Skytteanska Samfundet, which is a scientific academy based in Umeå, is handing out prizes for outstanding research and cultural commitment. The academy awards in total six prizes to young researchers, a cultural prize, the “Margareta och Eric Modigs” prize that is assigned to the Medical Faculty of Umeå University, a prize for a young artist from the Umeå Academy of Fine Arts, a prize for a young musician from the School of Music in Piteå and the “Samfundets stora pris”.


All prize winners awarded by the Kungl. Skytteanska Samfundet in 2022 (only in Swedish)

More information about Kungl. Skytteanska Samfundet

More information about Petra Marhava’s ERC project


For more information, please contact:

Petra Marhava
Umeå Plant Science Centre
Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Phone: +46 (0)90 786 8628
Twitter: @MarhavaPetra