2025-11-14

Karin Schillén defended her PhD in 1994 in Uppsala under Professor Wyn Brown, who was one of the pioneers in light scattering techniques and modeling of scattering data. During her postdoctoral period with Professor Per Claesson at KTH, she broadened her research to include colloidal interactions, and during her continued postdoctoral period with Professor Mitchell Winnik at the University of Toronto, she also began working with polymer synthesis.

Karin Schillén's research focus in the field of surface and colloid chemistry. Among other things, she studies the self-association of amphiphilic molecules (surfactants) such as bile salts, which in the body have the function of facilitating digestion, and which can form supramolecular mixed structures together with oppositely charged polymers.

Motivation for the award:

Professor Schillén has contributed with in-depth knowledge regarding the structures and self-aggregation of block copolymers in solutions and their interaction with different components. She is now one of the leading experts in the field. Recently, she has become interested in the self-aggregation of bile salts and polymers and this has resulted in a very distinguished work published in the prestigious journal Angewandte Chemie. This study has direct medical relevance.

All of Karin Schillén's 102 publications are of the highest scientific quality. All of them are very carefully carried out in terms of everything from experimental design to data analysis and modeling.

Professor Schillén has a large international network of collaborators, which has resulted in a visiting professorship at the Italian La Sapienza University of Rome and several assignments within the European Colloid and Interface Society network. In 2022, she was elected to the prestigious Council of the International Association of Colloid and Interface Scientists (IACIS).

Karin Schillén is a highly regarded teacher of physical chemistry at Lund University, where she is also very active in the development of chemistry education. She has supervised six doctoral students as main supervisor and has been both formal and informal co-supervisor to several others.

Karin Schillén is active in the Swedish Chemistry Society, where she was also a member of the board of the Section for Surface and Materials Chemistry during the years 2015-2021.

– I feel extremely honored to receive the Arrhenius plaque and I would like to express my warm thanks to the Swedish Chemical Society. I grew up and was educated in Uppsala, so it feels extra nice that the prize is awarded in Svante Arrhenius' name. I would also like to thank all my doctoral students and collaborators, both national and international, who have contributed to the research that has been awarded the prize over the years, she says.

The prize ceremony will take place during the 22nd Nordic Workshop on Scattering from Soft Matter, NSSM2026, which will be held on 13-15 January 2026, at Kemicentrum, Naturvetarvägen 22, in Lund. Link: NSSM2026 | Division of Computational Chemistry

For questions, contact:

Agnes Rinaldo-Matthis, President of the Swedish Chemical Society (Svenska Kemisamfundet)

agnes.rinaldo.matthis@kemisamfundet.se