Kell Mortensen is head the Biophysics Group at the Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Copenhagen. Kell Mortensen obtained his Ph.D. in physics from DTU in 1981, was post doc. at the IBM Research Center in New York 1980-81, and got affiliated with the Physics Department at Risoe National Laboratory in 1983. At Risoe Kell Mortensen was responsible for the construction and the science at the small-angle neutron scattering facility, and involved in the establishing the Danish Polymer centre jointly with DTU. In 2007 he joined the University of Copenhagen, where he is heading the Biophysics group, and has been a co-founder of the Program for Synthetic Biology.

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Kell Mortensen's main Research interests lie within the borderline between physics, materials science and biology. He has published more than 310 papers in international journals and books, including papers in high impact journals as Nature, Science and Physical Review Letters. Kell Mortensen has given more than 100 invited presentations at international conferences, summer schools and institutions. Kell Mortensen is or has been member of a number of national and international science committees and councils, including the board of Danish National Research Foundation, the European Spallation Source Scandinavia, and the Danish and the European Neutron Scattering associations.