Göran Wallberg Grant to Maria Siiskonen

 Congratulations to Maria Siiskonen, who was awarded a grant of SEK 50,000 from the Chalmers Foundation and Göran Wallberg's Memorial Fund in 2019, which will give funding for a four-month stay in Copenhagen, Denmark.

 The Chalmers alum Göran Wallberg (VV-45) generously donated 2 million with the aim of helping students and younger researchers to gain international experience during their studies. The grant covers the areas of ICT (Information and Communication Technology), Production Technology and Environmental Technology. 

"It's a very nice Christmas present," says Maria Siiskonen, PhD student at the Department of Industrial and Materials Science, Chalmers. “I will use the grant for a research stay at the Technical University of Denmark, DTU, to learn more about adaptable manufacturing systems for personalized medicines.”

 Looking for solutions 

Maria Siiskonen's previous research has focused on product design and how different functionalities can be incorporated into medicines, for example in tablets. It makes it possible to adapt the medicine to the needs of the individual patient and thus optimize patients' treatments against a number of different diseases.  

A consequence from product customization is the accelerating number of product variants and previous studies indicate that current pharmaceutical production systems are not flexible enough to enable production of customized product in an economically feasible manner. 

“I want to take a closer look at how the production systems for individualized medicines to find how they should be designed, both from an economic and sustainable perspective. My focus will be on the adaptability and flexibility of the systems to meet the demand for patient-adapted product variants.”  

Strong research at DTU attracts 

Maria explains that DTU's research group has a good reputation in the research area, in terms of the field of product customization and strategic approaches to product portfolio design.

“Being here for a couple of months, will give me excellent opportunities to get a first-hand insight into their methods, discover new tools and hopefully get optimized product development methods to bring home with me. I think this will be an excellent opportunity to develop as a researcher”, concludes Maria.  