Aug 17, 2025
End of summer update
Back for more action after an eventful summer! Ian attended the Statphys Satellite meeting in Lviv, Ukraine (
Back for more action after an eventful summer! Ian attended the Statphys Satellite meeting in Lviv, Ukraine (
Collaborators of the Voluminex project, coordinated by the Hoffecker group and KTH, arrive in Stockholm for the official project kickoff. In this 5 year international project, we will develop a network based imaging technology for 3D mapping of molecules in organoids.
Exciting announcement - our group at KTH/SciLifeLab will be coordinating a big cross-Europe project over the next 5 years to develop a 3D spatial molecular imaging technology from networks.
The project will be conducted together with partners Erik Benson at Karolinska/SciLifeLab Stockholm, Stockholm-based sequencing technology company Single Technologies AB led by CEO Johan Strömqvist, biologists Benedetta Artegiani and Delilah Hendriks at Princess Maxima Center for Pediatric Oncology in Utrecht, Netherlands, and physicist Martin Weigt at Sorbonne University in Paris.
We're funded by the EU through the EIC Pathfinder program. Read more about it here:
This autumn, Ian, David, and Simon attended an exciting DNA30 conference in Baltimore where we learned about the latest breakthroughs in the molecular programming field. David and Simon presented the results of their recent research on finding hidden spatial information in DNA barcode networks.
We were also honored to host a talk here at SciLifeLab by Joshua Weinstein, a pioneer in the field of spatial inference from molecular networks, who presented to our community the exciting work he is doing in this field.
This autumn also marked the second iteration of the popular KTH master's/doctoral course Machine Learning for Biotechnology - co-taught with Anniina Vihervaara. Great to listen to the student presentations at the end!
Earlier this month, Ian traveled to Japan and gave a talk on spatial molecular networks at Kyoto University's Institute for Frontier Life and Medical Sciences (LiMe) hosted by Professor Hirofumi Shintaku.
And Ian is now on Bluesky -
This spring, we welcomed new member, experienced postdoctoral researcher Joel Spratt. Joel did his PhD in Oxford, and did a postdoc at Karolinska Institutet prior to joining us, where he will be working on developing new sequencing-based technologies. This spring we also published 2 preprints.
Check them out here:
🍂 Autumn greetings! 🍂 A warm welcome to two new lab members. Dr. Anastassia Runina is joining us as a postdoc. Anastassia, with background in real-time PCR, microarrays and next gen sequencing product development, and STI detection, will be developing novel biotechnologies related to next gen sequencing with us. Johanna Blumenthal, from the Molecular Techniques in the Life Sciences Scilifelab Master program, is joining us for her Project and Master's thesis. Welcome Anastassia and Johanna! In other news, Ian is in the final weeks of a new Master's course CB206V on Machine Learning in Biotechnology, co-organized with Gene Technology Department colleague Anniina Vihervaara. Check out the
Big news after an exciting spring and summer. We are honored to be one of only two groups in Sweden awarded an ERC Proof of Concept grant for our project MESH_CHIP, in June we filed our first patent, and this year Dr. Erik Benson, postdoc-extraordinaire, has accepted an offer to join Karolinska Institutet as an assistant professor next spring, right here in Scilifelab. Good times!!! 🔥🔥🔥
Happy new year and congratulations to Master's student Salomé Hahne who last week won a poster award in the KI Biomedicine program for her work with us on DNA diffusion analysis!🔥 And a belated congratulations to postdoc Erik Benson who was awarded the VR Starting Grant for his proposal on strong-binding DNA nanostructures! 💪 And finally a warm welcome to newcomer Hans Jiang, who is dual majoring in Biotechnology & Physics at KTH, and will be studying the thermodynamics and statistical mechanics of nucleic acid hybridization with us. Good start for the year!
Warm welcome to KI student Salomé Hahne! She has recently joined us as part of the Biomedicine Master's program's rotation. Ian taught a 2 day statistics and programming workshop for the Scilifelab Master's program this month. Video lectures can be found on youtube.
We're proud to announce our latest contribution to the emerging field of DNA sequencing-based microscopy. The work was led by newly enrolled doctoral student David Fernandez Bonet. Check out the full preprint.
Congratulations to lab members Simon Kolmodin Dahlberg and David Fernandez Bonet on successful graduation and completion of their M.Sc. programs including successful defenses! We welcome them now as doctoral students. We wish you courage, strength, and good luck on your coming journey!
New paper out on the stochastic modeling of antibody multivalent binding: nature.com/articles/s43588-022-00218-z Check out our research briefing on the topic, and KTH news item for a reader-friendly explanation!
We are welcoming three new members: Dr. Erik Benson has joined us for a postdoc after previously being at Oxford as an MSCA Fellow. Shuai Lang who was previously a Master's student at Karolinska Institutet will begin his doctoral studies with us. And KTH M.Sc. student Simon Kolmodin Dahlberg has joined us now for his thesis. Welcome!
A warm welcome and thanks to our first generation of students. KTH students David Fernández Bonet and Simon Kolmodin Dahlberg will each do their Master's thesis with us. And a belated welcome to KI Master's student Li Ma who has worked over the summer and this autumn, establishing the first experiments and infrastructure of our new lab. Amazing job!
The Hoffecker Lab has set up shop in the amazing Gene Technology department at KTH/SciLifeLab. It is a huge honor to be among this stellar group of internationally recognized researchers.
The Hoffecker Lab will officially launch from May 1st 2021 as a new member in the Gene Technology Department, at KTH Royal Institute of Technology on the SciLifeLab campus in Stockholm. The funding making this possible comes from an
Our aim is to develop novel biotechnologies that use the programmable information storage capabilities of DNA to create molecular logical circuits, control the interactions of molecules, define structures at the nanoscale, and gather information from biological specimens through DNA sequencing methods. What motivates us is the satisfaction of finding clever ways to manipulate information with molecules to do surprising and useful things!
Our immediate focus is on exploring and growing the newly emerging field of "DNA sequencing-based microscopy", "DNA microscopy", or "imaging-by-sequencing". The goal of this field is to generate entire images without the use of traditional optics. Instead, microscopic information is recorded in molecules of DNA, stored and processed in that form, and ultimately decoded using high throughput sequencing technology and mathematics to reconstruct images. This exciting field has the potential to completely change how biological and medical information is obtained, surpassing many of the physical limitations of classical microscopy, while at the same time presenting new challenges.
If you're curious to learn more about our research, get in touch by contacting Ian (✉︎ ian.hoffecker (at) scilifelab.se
Our group is located in Stockholm in the Science for Life Laboratory (SciLifeLab) Campus Solna, an ambitious institution established as a cooperation between KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Karolinska Institutet, and Stockholm University with the goal of advancing life sciences and fostering collaboration between academics, healthcare, and industry. The institute gathers a community of researchers spanning many disciplines, hosts multiple national infrastructure platforms, and is a hub for international collaborations.
Learn more:
We are a member of the acclaimed Gene Technology Department in the School of Engineering Sciences in Chemistry, Biotechnology and Health at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Its origins established in 1697, KTH is Sweden's top technical research and education institution, a major European node for innovation, and one of the world's highest ranked universities.
Learn more:
Our group's work is made possible by generous funding from the EU European Research Council (ERC), by Swedish taxpayers via the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet), the Åke Wiberg Foundation, SciLifeLab's Research Environment Development fund, and KTH's CBH School.
We are proud member of the DNA Computing community and International Society for Nanoscale Science, Computation and Engineering. Learn more: