Funding for student projects

Student: Grace Laura Romania, MSc. Environment & Development

Project title: PFAS contamination in the state of Maine

Main supervisor: Bjarne W. Strobel, Associate Professor, PLEN

Co-supervisor: Mette Weinreich Hansen, Associate Professor, IFRO

Project period:January-March 2026

External partner(s): Maine PFAS Fund

Description: The project is investigating how Maine farmers are responding to the ongoing crisis of PFAS contamination in the state of Maine. In what ways farm factors, activities, and policies/governance keep farms with significant levels of contamination in operation and viable, and what factors force others to shutter. These attributes may include the levels of PFAS and types of PFAS on the property, organic practices, and feed rotations.

The project will utilize participatory observation on a few Maine dairy farms, which, with their large land holdings, bear a significant brunt of the contamination in the state. I aim to gain insights into the daily operations and types of activities on each active dairy farm that enable mitigation of contamination. I also plan to conduct interviews with dairy farmers who have been forced to close their operations. This will better inform my understanding of what factors made remaining solvable forward impossible.

Student: Andreas Peter Leerbeck, MSc Computer Science, DIKU

Project title: Annotation Pipeline & NLP for Food-Waste Reduction in Schools

Main supervisor: Daniel Hershcovich, Tenure-Track Assistant Professor, DIKU

Co-supervisor: Bent Egberg Mikkelsen, Professor, IGN

Project period: October 2025 – April 2026

External partner(s): Herstedlund Skole, Lindevangskolen

Description: This project is part of Mål & Minimér (“Measure & Minimize”), an interdisciplinary initiative to reduce school canteen food waste through digital measurement and participatory education. Pupils measure discarded food using digital scales, take photos, and later annotate the images in class with food categories, weights, free-text reflections about what was discarded and why.

The student will implement a data annotation pipeline and interface that links canteen images and measurements with subsequent classroom annotations, and train and evaluate NLP/ML models to generate natural-language captions describing discarded items and possible reasons, predict food categories and quantities from images, and integrate model suggestions into the annotation interface for pupils to refine, improving usability and data quality.

Student: Samuel Cook, Master's Student in Environmental Science (Soil and Water specialisation)

Project title: Floatovoltaics, Warming Summers, and Freshwater Resilience: Experimental Tests of Algal Growth Suppression and Evaporation Reduction

Main supervisor: Professor Jesper Riis Christiansen

Co-supervisor: Karl-Emil Johan Tadayoni Heidberg (CPSC) and Laura Kase (Freshwater Biology)

Project period: November 2025 - June 2026 (Experimental run: January 2026)

External partner(s): HOFOR

Description: Freshwater reservoirs face dual challenges from climate change: intensified algal blooms that threaten water quality and increased evaporative water losses. Floatovoltaics (floating solar panels) represent a dual-use solution for the green transition, generating renewable energy while potentially delivering key co-benefits for water management. This project will provide crucial experimental evidence on whether floatovoltaics can enhance water security, directly supporting sustainable resource management goals within my Environmental Science specialisation in Soil and Water.

This project will test whether floatovoltaic surface cover can:

• Suppress the growth of prominent Scandinavian freshwater algae under current and future climate scenarios
• Reduce evaporation rates in reservoir-like conditions
• Determine if these effects change under different warming conditions

Student: Ghader G. Al-Mosawy, BSc. Biotechnology

Main supervisor(s): Prof. John Dirk Nieland, Prof. Meike Burow, and special consultant Benedicte Smith-Sivertsen

Project period: 30 June to 22 August

External partner(s): Aalborg University

Read the full project article here

Description: The project focused on exploring the potential of a widely spread invasive weed, nutggrass, as a source of natural bioactive compounds for dermatological and cosmetic applications. The main aim was to investigate the plant’s capacity to inhibit hair growth and reduce inflammation in skin disorders. 

The nutgrass is an invasive species that harbours valuable bioactive compounds with promising applications in skin care and hair growth management. By extracting and utilising these natural compounds, it is possible to develop innovative, eco-friendly cosmetic products. This approach turns a problematic weed into a sustainable resource, providing novel solutions that align with environmental and health-conscious consumer demands.

Student: Julie Zacho Thorball, MSc in Global Development

Main supervisor(s): Prof. Jens Friis Lund (main supervisor), Assistant Prof. Neda Trifkovic (co-supervisor)

Project period: August 2025 to December 2025

External partner(s): European Energy

Description: I will be studying community engagement and opposition to the Nearshore Wind Farm project at Jammerland Bugt. The project is developed by European Energy and TotalEnergies in Jammerland Bugt, just 6 km from the shore and the peninsula Reersø, near western Zealand. The project faced many delays, which have affected the project. This project has been featured in local media and gained traction politically as a NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) case, however, it is yet to be covered what this opposition stems from.

To date, research and policy debates have primarily focused on opposition to renewable energy infrastructure in resource-constrained, rural communities, where local populations often lack the means to resist. By contrast, Jammerland Bugt is a unique case: opposition has been driven primarily by upper-middle-class summerhouse owners, who possess both the financial resources and organisational capacity to mobilise against the project. Their opposition centres on visual intrusion and noise impacts.

I will conduct a single case study based on the Jammerland Bugt case, utilising both qualitative and quantitative methods. My research method is interviews and statistical analysis.

Student(s): Jonathan Fogt Khan, Evangelos Balatsos, Kyriakos Lymperopoulos, Nature and Forestry Management, Medicinal Chemistry

Main supervisor(s): Benedicte Smith-Sivertsen, Special Consultant, KU Lighthouse

Co-supervisors: Anna Vestergård Jacobsen, Senio Consultant, KU Lighthouse, Carsen Nico Portefée Hjortsø, Associate Professor, IFRO

Project period: 14 months

External partner(s): DHI, Everllence, Skibsværftet V/Niels Kristian Stumman, Havhøst

Description: Biofouling on ships and marine infrastructure increases fuel consumption, emissions, and maintenance, while conventional antifouling solutions can rely on toxic biocides that contribute to marine pollution. This project will explore sustainable antifouling coating concepts inspired by seaweed chemistry, with the aim of developing and testing low-toxicity approaches that can reduce early-stage biofilm formation and ultimately decrease the need for harmful active ingredients.

The project will be anchored in practical industry needs and test practices through dialogue with stakeholders such as DHI and the shipbuilding company Niels Stummann. The work will begin by identifying a small set of promising seaweed-inspired compounds and formulation strategies from the literature, followed by small-scale synthesis. These candidates will be incorporated into simple coating formulations and applied to standardized test coupons/panels. Performance will be compared against relevant controls using a practical, reproducible testing and scoring approach (e.g., image-based surface coverage, staining-based assessment, or other feasible proxies depending on available facilities). The outcome will be a structured set of results linking formulation choices to antifouling performance, along with clearly documented protocols and an organized dataset that can be reproduced and built upon.

The results are relevant for ports and harbors, vessel operators, shipyards (skibsværfter), coating stakeholders, and environmental management efforts. The project is interdisciplinary, combining marine/environmental problem framing, chemistry/materials formulation, and experimental design/measurement, while keeping end-user requirements in view. Findings will be disseminated through a public or semi-public presentation (e.g., a KU seminar/Living Lab session) and summarized in a short public-facing one-page brief.

Student: Iris Groot

Main supervisor(s): Teis Hansen, Professor, IFRO

Co-supervisors: Adéla Plechatá, Tenure Track Adjunkt, Department of Psychology

Project period: February 2026 to June 2026

External partner(s): To be determined.

Description: Football has a significant environmental footprint, driven by fan transport, stadium operations, consumption, and merchandise, highlighting the urgency of engaging this sector in sustainability efforts. However, its audience, traditionally male-dominated and often perceived as disengaged from environmental issues, has received limited attention in pro-environmental behaviour research. At the same time, football communities are characterised by strong social identities and norms, creating unique opportunities for collective behavioural change. Therefore, this thesis project will investigate: Who should be the messengers of change within football communities? Through an experimental survey, distributed preferably among Danish football fans, the study will examine which type of actor (elite players, professional clubs, or fellow fans) is most influential in changing fans’ second-order beliefs about sustainability. That is, perceptions of what other members of one’s social group think. Such beliefs are powerful drivers of behaviour and, in many contexts, even stronger predictors of action than personal attitudes. This makes them powerful indicators for reshaping collective expectations and accelerating norm change within football communities. The project is interdisciplinary, combining perspectives from environmental psychology (social norms and belief formation), sports philosophy (role modelling, ethical responsibility, the governance of sport institutions), and green transition research. By integrating these fields, the thesis project advances understanding of how football can contribute to broader societal transformations toward sustainability.

Within the Living Lab "Our Plant-based Future" earlier projects have surrounded  the themes of:

• Behavioral changes in canteens and commercial kitchens
• School meals
• Language and identity
• Legunes
• Robots in the field
• Historic crops = new opportunities

Check out earlier funded student projects within Our Plant-based future here.