Maria Strømme

She became a professor in nanotechnology at Uppsala University in 2004.^[1] She became Sweden's youngest professor in a technical subject.^[2] Strømme holds a master of science degree in engineering physics, and completed her doctoral thesis in solid state physics in 1997 at Uppsala University.^[3] She became a scientist at Naturvetenskapliga forskningsrådet. Between 2002 and 2007, she worked as an academy physicist and she was elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. She is also a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, the Norwegian Academy of Technological Sciences^[4] and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.^[5]

In 2025 Strømme published the paper 'Universal consciousness as foundational field: ^[6] A theoretical bridge between quantum physics and non-dual philosophy' in AIP Advances. Here Strømme moves beyond her normal field of nanotechnology research. She proposes a framework for further scientific inquiry into the problem of consciousness, building on insights from across physics, philosophy and neurology. Strømme suggests that consciousness could be viewed as more fundamental than space, time and matter. Before the Big Bang reality exists as a timeless and undifferentiated potential, i.e. universal consciousness. ''Universal thought'' is the creative mechanism that collapses consciousness so that individual and collective realities emerge. This can happen via the pathways of ''symmetry breaking'', ''quantum fluctuations'' or '' discrete state selection''. Localized exitations of the consciousness field leads to individual consciousness generating meaning and perception. The framework challenges the notion of consciousness as merely subjective. Consciousness is rather a factor in shaping both small-scale phenomena and large-scale order.