With the ERC grant, Brydegaard will develop laser technique by using insect wings as a ‘laser mirror’ to determine the wing thickness on a nanometre scale. He and his colleagues from combustion physics have already previously demonstrated that wing thickness differs in closely related mosquito species. The goal is to generate backward moving laser beams from flying insects. The detection range of small insects is expected to drastically improve by several kilometres. In this way, he hopes to be able to identify significantly more of the thousands of insects that fly around in the landscape. In order to distinguish between different species of mosquito, entomologists currently have to sequence the genomes of the mosquitos.   

Congratulations Mikkel!

Read more on Lund University's web page.

All four grantees from Lund University. Photo: Mikkel Brydegaard