Jan-Erik Löfroth, Professor of Applied Surface Chemistry at Chalmers.
Research interests: polymers in gels and solutions, surface active agents and lipids.
Jan-Erik Löfroth is a physical chemist with a PhD from the University of Göteborg. After graduation in 1985 he was employed at the pharmaceutical company AB Hässle in Mölndal, which today is one of the research sites within AstraZeneca. In 1966 he was appointed adjunct professor at Physical Chemistry at Lund´s University and in 1999 adjunct professor at Applied Chemistry at Chalmers University of Technology. After retirement from AstraZeneca in 2006 he has still been part time employed at Applied Chemistry as researcher, lecturer and assistant supervisor for students. At the department he is also responsible for light scattering techniques.
Jan-Erik´s research has been focused on properties of polymers in solutions and as gels, as well as surfactant and lipid systems. During the years within AstraZeneca he headed a physical chemistry group with competence in surface and colloid chemistry. The main tasks for Jan-Erik was to take part in work within AstraZeneca both as consultant and as operative withing different projects, to transfer knowledge to other groups, to generate and evaluate ideas and to contribute to strategic discussions in different areas. He also managed patent related work during those years. The main task for the group was to contribute with material science knowledge in drug delivery research and development.
Besides work at AstraZeneca as Principal Scientist, Jan-Erik has participated in meetings on polysaccharides as adjoint member to Nordisk Industrifond, acted in the board of the Industrial Council of CAP (Competence centre for Amphiphilic Polymers, Lund), been member of the AIS project ”Water distribution and molecular mobility in heterogeneous structures of relevance for the food and pharmaceutical industry”, and member of the SSF project ”Structure and mobility in heterogeneous systems - Transport of molecules and nanoparticles in microheterogeneous systems”, participated in the steering group for the SUMO competence centre in Göteborg, been working within a reference group at the University of Karlstad concerning Chemical Engineering education, and recently been involved with a strategic group at Chalmers with the aim to make possible increased interactions with the pharmaceutical industry. He has further been engaged frequently as lecturer on courses at different levels at universities in Sweden and abroad. Also, during the years Jan-Erik has been given several oral presentations and posters at national and international scientific conferences, and organized or coorganized scientific meetings.
Jan-Erik´s work today is related to ongoing research activities within SUMO. The results have been summarized in reports which are available on SUMO´s home page. In these reports it has been shown how static and dynamic light scattering can be used to better understand materials, such as gels, particles, e.g. polyelctrolyte complexes, and polymers in solutions. He is also presently cosupervising a master student project concerning core-shell nanoparticles.
Through the years Jan-Erik has been supervising/cosupervising 14 diploma works for master of science thesis, 4 PhD works, and one postdoc work. He has had two assignments as opponent at doctoral thesis, been member of the doctoral committee of several PhD projects, and acted as reviewer of scientific publications in international journals. He has published 44 articles revied by referees, and has 13 patent applications related to drug delivery.
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