Henrik Birkedal obtained his PhD with honors from Université de Lausanne, Switzerland, followed by a postdoc at University of California, Santa Barbara. In 2004, he was awarded a stipend to establish his own research program at Aarhus University where he is now full professor and leads a research group within biological and bioinspired materials. His research interests are diverse and span advanced structural characterization using synchrotron imaging, diffraction, fluorescence and scattering; bone biology; biomineralization; crystallization; bioinspired materials etc. He has published over 137 papers.