News archive

KI researcher Goran Papenberg has been granted a project grant from the Swedish Research Council for his research on the brain's ability to produce new neurons and its relevance for long-term memory and depression in aging.

His mission is to lead and develop the IT Office and contribute to KI’s continued digitization journey. Mattias Nordström has been the acting IT director since his predecessor Joakim Winter left last summer.

Of the 31 researchers appointed Wallenberg Academy Fellow this year, five will be active at Karolinska Institutet. The five-year grant is awarded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation and provides young, promising research leaders with long-term research funding in Sweden.

A workshop was done 28-29 September on education for sustainable development that involved students, teachers, researchers and managers from the four universities.

We are unique at KI with our environmental certification. The audit in November 2023 showed continued very stable and positive development - and we were recommended continued ISO 1400 certification by the audit manager. So we continue to reduce our negative environmental impact - well done to all of us!

You can order printed KI Christmas cards with envelopes and digital Christmas cards (PDF). The motif this years is "Microbiome" by Ina Schuppe Koistinen, watercolor artist and docent at the Department MTC.

A large proportion of patients who start taking ADHD medication, especially young adults, stop within the first year. However, people who use ADHD medicine for a long time and in higher-than-average doses seem to have a higher risk of some cardiovascular diseases. This is according to two new studies led by researchers from Karolinska Institutet and published in The Lancet Psychiatry and JAMA Psychiatry.

Vinnova (the Swedish governmental agency for innovation systems) is to finance the project "For efficient and sustainable use of health data through the integration of the DIGITAL-projects and GMS in Sweden (DIGIfor1healthSE)" with a grant of SEK 12 million over a period of four years. The project, which is designed to gather Sweden’s expertise on health data, involves TEF-Health at Karolinska Institutet and has SciLifeLab as the national coordinator.

This year we welcome our international students to participate in a global survey called the International Student Barometer. The survey opens on Monday 27 November and the deadline is 18 December.

The nomination assembly has, through electronic voting, appointed three new members to KI´s faculty council.

Last week, a Occupational Therapy (OT) course unfolded at Campus Flemingsberg, where 22 students from 17 Nordic and Baltic countries, including 5 students from Karolinska Institutet (KI), gathered to delve into a project under the Nordplus programme.

Giovanna Perinetti Casoni from the hematology unit, at the Department of Medicine, Huddinge (MedH), is defending her thesis "Regulation of cytotoxic lymphocyte effector functions" on 1 December 2023. Main supervisor is Yenan Bryceson (MedH).

The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research has awarded an 8 million SEK ASPIRE II Award to the Bennie Lemmens Research Group at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics (MBB) at Karolinska Institutet. Supported by a previous ASPIRE I award, the team of Bennie Lemmens established state-of-the-art microscopy and DNA labeling techniques to study how human cells copy their DNA and respond to anticancer therapies, with unprecedented precision in time and space.

Johanna Mayer, PhD student at NVS, came 2nd yesterday in the Researchers' Grand Prix Final. Researchers' Grand Prix is a competition where researchers are challenged to present their research in the most captivating, inspiring and educational way possible – in just four minutes!

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Kanazawa University in Japan have made a new discovery which could improve breast cancer treatments. The researchers studied cancer stem cells (CSCs), which can resist chemotherapy and form new tumors. They found a type of CSCs that are vulnerable to drugs that target a pump in the cells. These drugs could potentially kill these CSCs and help patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), a hard-to-treat form of breast cancer.

In the latest Swedish Research Council (VR) call, a total of SEK 660,747,160 has been granted to 143 KI researchers, an increase on last year’s SEK 625,904,933. All in all, VR granted SEK 1.37 billion in 2023, compared with 1.2 billion in 2022.

Tips from KI Grants Office about current calls.

KI-researcher Pauliina Damdimopoulou has been awarded a EUR 2 million ERC Consolidator Grant (European Research Council) for the SAFER project (SAfeguarding female FERtility-development of human-relevant in vitro tools for reproductive toxicity). The research will investigate the impact of commonly occurring environmental chemical contaminants on women's reproductive health. The grant is awarded under Horizon Europe, the EU's programme for research and innovation.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have evaluated the possibility of alerting drones equipped with automated external defibrillators (AED) to patients with suspected cardiac arrest. In more than half of the cases, the drones were ahead of the ambulance by an average of three minutes. In cases where the patient was in cardiac arrest, the drone-delivered defibrillator was used in a majority of cases. The results have been published in the journal The Lancet Digital Health.

The programme is given in collaboration within the framework of the University Alliance Stockholm Trio; Karolinska Institutet (KI), KTH Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) and Stockholm University (SU).

The Federico Iovino group at Karolinska Institutet, and Therakind are initiating an exciting collaboration involving the identification of innate molecules with antimicrobial activity against antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections, with particular interest for brain infections considering the poor capability of current antibiotics to cross the blood-brain barrier.

Anti-rheumatic drugs used for rheumatoid arthritis might prevent the development of autoimmune thyroid disease, according to a new observational study by researchers from Karolinska Institutet published in the Journal of Internal Medicine.

On 23-24 and 28 November the pods and touchdown seats will finally be installed in ANA Futura.

Hi Carrie Tran, doctoral student at the Division of Family Medicine and Primary Care. On December 6 you will defend your thesis "Students' perceptions of interprofessional learning and virtual patients in primary healthcare". What is the main focus of the thesis?

From December 1st, the Scientific sample shuttle is driven by a new supplier - Cargo Logistics eXpress (CLX). In connection with the change of supplier, a stop in Flemingsberg is moved.

This is a short report from the project team working on the implementation of KI RIMS. The posts are aimed at those who are interested in the work of adapting the product Elements from Symplectic to KI's requirements and conditions and want to follow the development process.

Karolinska Institutet has recently defined nine strategic focus areas to support the university’s growth, with the long-term objective of realising our vision. Work is now underway to concretise each focus area. Track the progress on a new page of the Staff Portal.

This year, Forte has awarded funding to a total of 20 projects at Karolinska Institutet, including three researchers from the Department of Global Public Health, Anna-Clara Hollander, Sibylle Herzig Van Wees and Lene Lindberg.

A new study by Claudia Kutter’s research group at the Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology (MTC) has identified potential pitfalls in the use of the gene editing technique CRISPR-Cas9, a gene scissors that is used for cancer treatments.

Global health is becoming increasingly complex, ranging from pandemics and climate change to wars, migration and deteriorating mental health. There is an urgent need for a new generation of global health leaders, equipped with the skills to navigate different political environments and drive change. The Stockholm School of Economics and Karolinska Institutet are now launching a new initiative to meet the challenges ahead.

The Unit for BioEntrepreneurship (UBE) at LIME is involved in a project that received a certificate of recognition from the European Parliament.

Gambling addiction can increase the risk of long-term sick leave for several years, according to a new study published in Psychological Medicine. Researchers from Karolinska Institutet behind the study point to the need to detect people with gambling addiction in time to avoid financial and health problems.

Anna Sjöström at the research group Experimental and Clinical Neuroendocrinology, the Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery, will defend her thesis "Severe COVID-19 and routine biomarker patterns" on November 24, 2023.

Main Supervisor is Charlotte Höybye.

KI researcher Volker Lauschke has received the Swedish Research Council's Consolidation Grant for the research project "Modulation of Tissue Communication to Combat Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease" regarding the severe liver disease NASH. The Swedish Research Council's Consolidation Grant amounts to 7.4 million SEK over five years. This marks the fifth time Volker Lauschke has been awarded funding from the Swedish Research Council.

KI researcher Cristiana Cruceanu has been awarded the Swedish Research Council's establishment grant for the research project "The placenta as a mediator of the effects of psychological stress on neurodevelopmental reprogramming: lessons from human in vitro model systems." The Swedish Research Council's establishment grant amounts to 6 million over four years.

Congratulations to Igor Adameyko, Christopher Cederroth, Cristiana Cruceanu, Lars I Eriksson, Volker Lauschke, Jon Lundberg, Carl Sellgren, Camilla Svensson, and Eddie Weitzberg, researchers at the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, on receiving grants from the Swedish Research Council's call in medicine and health for 2023. In total, 56.4 million has been awarded to the researchers at FyFa.

Katharina Susek from the Hematology unit, at the Department of Medicine, Huddinge (MedH), is defending her thesis "Strategies to optimize natural killer cell functions in the tumor microenvironment" on 24 November 2023. Evren Alici is the main supervisor (MedH).

There is a well-known relationship between good physical fitness at a young age and a lower risk of cardiovascular disease later in life. However, when researchers adjusted for familial factors by means of sibling analysis, they found a weaker association, although the link between high body mass index (BMI) and cardiovascular disease remained strong. The study, which was conducted by researchers from Karolinska Institutet and other universities, is published in JAMA Network Open.

It is common for middle-aged women with suspected myocardial infarction to be diagnosed with broken heart syndrome instead, which is triggered by stress and grief. Per Tornvall hopes that his research will result in more people receiving the correct diagnosis and fewer people suffering a relapse. He is now testing to see if internet CBT may help to heal the heart.

We congratulate the ten researchers at MedH who have been awarded grants from the Swedish Cancer Society (Cancerfonden) for the period 2024-2026. Together, the MedH researchers are awarded grants of just over SEK 33 million.

We wish to congratulate the six researchers at the Department of Biosciences and Nutrition (BioNut) at Karolinska Institutet, who has received funding from Cancerfonden for the years 2024 to 2026. Together the researchers at our department received more than SEK 21 millions.

Are you interested in contributing to developing KI's overall collaborations with universities in Japan and representing KI in the steering group for the strategic partnership between Stockholm trio (KI, SU and KTH) and the University of Tokyo? 

As a KI-affiliate you have the opportunity to book the public area Torget at the University Library in Solna and in Flemingsberg.

During the autumn school break in November AIMES - Center for the Advancement of Integrated Medical and Engineering had a new exceptional opportunity to create a workshop at Tekniska Museet about the future of humanity. This was a new unique chance for our researchers to share their passion for science and inspire the next generation of scientists.

Dr Erdinc Sezgin (KBH) and Dr Federico Pietrocola (BioNut) receive prestigious Wellcome Leap Funding through the Dynamic Resilience Program.

Tips from Grants Office regarding current calls

In October, KI submitted suggestions to the government for its research and innovation policy bill, which will be presented at the end of 2024. KI stresses the importance of basic research and free competition on research funding as well as educational investment in the form of increased compensation per student and more university places. KI also suggests a national research programme for life science centred on research and technical development.

This is a summary of the information meeting that Maria Eriksdotter, Dean of KI South, together with the departmental heads of BioNut and MedH and the project leader, held on 15 November on Zoom addressing all staff at BioNut and MedH.

KI’s residential management conference in October among deans, heads of department, administrative managers, academic vice presidents and heads of office proved as conducive to healthy debate as it was to pleasant socialising. Our discussions were based on the nine focus areas that have crystallised out of our dialogue with students, staff and managers about what KI needs to focus on in order to attain the goals and vision set out in Strategy 2030.

Soon there will be more of us in ANA Futura, which will be great fun. Due to the increased number of people, the number of seats in the lunchroom will be supplemented.