![[my picture]](peter_010810.jpg)
I am a physical chemist at the University of Stavanger with
interest in reaction kinetics of chemical and biological systems and some
industry related research. The city of Stavanger (ca. 100 000 inhabitants) lies in the south-western part of Norway. The university has about 9000 students and is nicely located near Hafrsfjord.
After an chemical eduction at the CHF in Stuttgart and studies at the University of Oslo, I have since 1984 been in Stavanger and work on chemical and biological oscillators; especially with the BZ reaction and circadian rhythms. The BZ reaction is a chemical oscillator that can show concentration oscillations, sometimes for hours, even in a simple beaker. Apart from oscillatory behavior, chemical oscillators show a variety of surprising (and quite fascinating!) phenomena that normally are associated with biological systems; for example excitability, bistability, chemical pulse propagation and spontaneous structure or pattern formation. Even chaos can be observed. I have expertise in enzyme kinetics and study dynamics and properties as well as temperature compensation of circadian clocks. In these studies the fungus Neurospora crassa is used as a model organism. I also work on an systems biology approach how metabolic pathways adapt to changing environmental conditions. I participated in two (1,2) European (SysMO) projects financed by the Norwegian FUGE program with focus on the influence of temperature on metabolic networks.
In industry-related projects we have studied precipitation kinetics of gas hydrates, polymer cross-linking as well as applying NMR and fluorescence spectroscopy to various problems in offshore industry. In cooperation with food research institutes we have been using PCR and RT-PCR techniques for rapid identification of toxic gene products from contaminating microorganisms in foods.
