News archive

The global and professional alumni network of KI engages former students, researchers and employees of KI, promoting knowledge, research, education and interaction. We hope to inspire alumni involvement, professional networking and international collaboration, all vital to a dedicated and sustainable alumni network. On November 9th, we hosted an alumni dinner in Tokyo for this very purpose, strategically in conjunction with the launch-event for the new UTokyo-KI Link collaboration.

The Greater NY-Region Alumni Network recently met for its second time at The Rockefeller University in conjuction with the annual Nicholson Lecture organized by the university. This year, Professor Rickard Sandberg, Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, was invited to give a lecture on “Single-Cell Technologies to Study Transcriptional Bursting and Alternative Splicing Regulation”.

Tips from Grants Office regarding current calls

Professor Gonçalo Castelo-Branco and Professor Jonas Frisén, Karolinska Institutet, are awarded distinguished professor grants from the Swedish Research Council, totalling just over SEK 62 million for the years 2024–2031.

Skin-to-skin contact between parent and child during the first hours after a very premature birth helps develop the child's social skills. This is according to a new study published in JAMA Network Open by researchers from Karolinska Institutet and others. The study also shows that fathers may play a more important role than previous research has shown.

Professor Robert A. Harris is made honorary doctorate at the Iuliu Hatieganu University of Medicine and Pharmacy (UMF) Cluj-Napoca, Romania. The honour is given in recognition of Bob Harris’ exceptional contributions to the development of the university, especially in the context of the European University Alliance NeurotechEU project.

The Ministry of Education and Research has recently tasked Bertil Lindahl with producing source material for a renegotiation of the national ALF agreement (ref. no U2022/02845). The ALF is a national agreement entered into between the government and certain regions on collaboration on medical education, clinical research and healthcare development.

This is a summary of the information meeting that Maria Eriksdotter, Dean of KI South, together with the departmental head of MedH and the project leader, held on 29 November on Zoom addressing all staff at BioNut and MedH.

People in Sweden of non-European descent have almost three times as many eating disorder symptoms as people born in Sweden. But despite this, they have significantly less access to specialist treatment. This is according to new research from Karolinska Institutet published in BJPsych Open.

KI will upgrade Primula to 12.6 starting Thursday, November 30 from 3:00 p.m. No one will then be able to work with the Primula/PA web.

The upgrade is expected to be completed already at 21:00 on the same day.
You can find the client for Primula under "Digital tools" and then Primula client.

Eating disorders are debilitating conditions characterized by dysregulated eating and/or weight-control behaviors leading to significant impairment of psychosocial functioning and/or physical health. Both environmental factors and variation in multiple genetic variants influence eating disorder etiology and maintenance.

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.

On November 27, 2023, an exchange of sensors will begin in all KI's buildings on Campus Solna. The aim is to gain more knowledge about how our premises are used and contribute to creating a better indoor environment.

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.