Niels Peter Revsbech
Professor, Ph.D. and Dr. Sc. in Microbial Ecology
I ended up in the field of sensor development and application by chance. I wanted to investigate the chemical microenvironment in stratified microbial communities, and it turned out that microscale sensors were good tools for this work.
At present most time is used for supervision, but I still also participate in the actual construction of novel microscale electrochemical sensors and biosensors. Due to my 40 years of experience in the construction of micro-sensors I have gained considerable knowledge about how to combine various types of materials and often also bacterial cultures.
The development of sensors has been intriguing, as I and my collaborators have been able to get a significantly improved knowledge about microbial metabolism every time we have developed a new micro-sensor. It is a wonderful feeling to see data coming up on the screen that are completely novel and result in a new understanding of nature.
Some of the sensors developed in my group are now used extensively all over the World. As an example a novel sensor that improved the in situ detection limit for oxygen by a factor of 1000 gave a new understanding of how oceanic oxygen minimum zones function, and resulted in completely new procedures for how water samples from such areas had to be treated. But it is not only for scientific purposes that our sensors result in valuable data – a nitrous oxide sensor originally developed in my laboratory is now used for control of waste water treatment. It is our intention that more of our sensors will be developed into long-term stable versions for use in for example control of wastewater treatment.
