News archive

This year's KLOK award goes to the Optometry program, which together with the St. Erik Eye Hospital has developed a clinical training clinic where students from several educational programs can broaden and deepen their knowledge in an interprofessional learning environment.

Bernard and Barbro Osher donate USD 2,100,000 (approx. SEK 23 million) to the Osher Center for Integrative Health at Karolinska Institutet. The donation follows an earlier donation in 2005 from the same donors.

The Swedish Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology annually awards the best doctoral thesis of the year. 2023 the award goes to Ritah Bakesiima, who completed her dissertation at the Department of Women's and Children's Health last year. Her research studies the barriers to contraception among adolescents, and enlightens the importance of peer counselling in increasing contraceptive uptake.

The strategic partnership agreement, signed between Karolinska Institutet and University of Tokyo aims to increase mobility of students and researchers, joint research projects and faculty development programs such as pedagogic training and research supervision.

The course aims to give doctoral students an opportunity to reflect on the importance of academic research and how this can lead to societal change.

As part of an initiative with Imperial College London, Karolinska Institutet aims to stimulate doctoral student networking and interaction between KI doctoral students and doctoral students at Imperial College.

To facilitate new and existing contacts between postdoctoral researchers and doctoral students as well as increase research collaboration with the University of Edinburgh, KI’s Internationalisation Board is pleased to announce the availability of limited competitive funds for a lab visit.

To facilitate new and existing contacts between researchers and doctoral students as well as increase research collaboration with King’s College London, KI’s Internationalisation Board is pleased to announce the availability of limited competitive funds for a lab visit.

Anna Wedell, professor at Karolinska Institutet, has been awarded the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA) Gold Medal 2023 for her efforts in precision medicine. This gold medal has been awarded since 1921 for outstanding achievements in technology, economics, business and society.

The Centre for Health Crises has received funding from the Swedish government to increase and support collaboration across the country’s universities on the topic of health crises. Initially, the Centre completed an online mapping of ongoing activities and existing health crises competences at a majority of the universities. We have also recruited Caroline de Groot, who is coordinating the work and is in the process of reaching out to key groups and individuals to learn more.

The Nordic Congress of Gerontology (NKG) is arranged every second year in the Nordic countries and next year Sweden will be hosting the event. The 27th edition will be held at Karolinska Institutet on 12–14 June 2024. It is anticipated that 800 people and scholars from different parts of the world will take part, offering a diverse array of distinctive perspectives on the challenges and opportunities linked to population ageing. Registration will open on 2 October 2023.

Former state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell has been awarded the BiotechBuilders Award 2023 for his efforts during the pandemic 2020-2023. The prize is awarded by the non-profit association Stockholm BiotechBuilders, to which KI is a partner and which works to strengthen the Swedish life science sector.

The Centre for Health Crises is currently supporting the WHO’s EMT (Emergency Medical Teams) initiative, through mentorship to the Ministries of Health in Georgia and Armenia in their development of EMTs. The director of the Centre, Professor Johan von Schreeb, has just returned from spending ten days in the two countries, working with the Ministries and other partners.

Since 2015, Karolinska Institutet has been a member of Scholars at Risk, a network that offers protection for researchers whose lives are in serious danger. Thanks to a request granted by KI and a donation by the Olle Engkvist Foundation, a researcher from Afghanistan has been given a position at KI.

The government has appointed Jan Albert, professor of infectious disease control at Karolinska Institutet and senior consultant at Karolinska University Hospital, to lead a government inquiry looking into strengthening the country’s preparedness for future pandemics. The directive concerns a national strategy for how pandemics are to be managed and a possible revision of the Communicable Diseases Act. The investigation should be delivered in February 2025.

STINT, the Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education, annually publishes an index measuring the internationalisation of Swedish higher education institutions. It has now given the maximum of five stars to Karolinska Institutet.

Lifestyles, the pandemic and dental care were some of the topics under discussion when Minister for Social Affairs and Public Health Jakob Forssmed visited Karolinska Institutet on 28 August, the same day as the autumn term kicked off.

The European Commission recently released the results of the 2023 call for European universities. NeurotechEU, the European University of Brain and Technology, where KI is a partner, is among the 30 selected alliances that will receive 14.3 million euro to continue their collaborations for another four years.

KI and the Univeristy of Toronto recently celebrated a course collaboration that has been ongoing for more than 25 years.

Karolinska Institutet has a long-standing collaboration with the global biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. In a recently published feature article in Drug Discovery Today, academic and industry representatives describe three success factors that help to leverage the strength of these types of partnerships: mutual collaboration, mutually beneficial science, and a mutual governance model with senior management involvement (3MCs).

The Government has appointed a new research committee - a group of experts - to act as advisors prior to their upcoming Research and Innovation Policy Bill. KI researcher Anna Wedell is one of the fifteen elected members.

Karolinska University Hospital's Director Björn Zoëga and Karolinska Institutet's President Annika Östman Wernerson have signed an agreement to establish a joint center for advanced cell, gene and tissue therapies.

Global Disaster Medicine - Health Needs and Responses is part of a consortium led by the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, called IPA Care, that aims to address the needs of countries on Western Balkan, along with Turkey, to strengthen their ability to prevent risks related to earthquakes and other health emergencies.

In this episode Lara Varpio dig a bit deeper into the some of the science methods and theory in Health professions education. The PAPERs podcast bring you the main points of a medical education article in under half an hour.

Congratulations to Samer Yammine at the Department of learning, informatics, management and ethics (LIME), who received the award "Male entrepreneurship educator of the year", an award included in The Triple E Awards!

To bring Sweden’s presidency of the EU to a close, the government is arranging a European Life Science conference to be held at Karolinska Institutet’s Aula Medica on 26–27 June. The theme of the conference is precision medicine, and KI – along with Karolinska University Hospital – has helped to draw up the programme.

Almost a hundred experts from 27 countries took part in a hackathon on June 17–18 to identify diseases in 14 patients lacking diagnoses. “Four of them have now received an answer and we’re confident that more are to come,” says professor and consultant Ann Nordgren, who was one of the organizers of the event.

Karolinska Institutet has been invited by STINT (The Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education) to nominate two candidates and a backup candidate to participate in the exchange programme for teaching staff called Teaching Sabbatical.

A new DNA-based COVID-19 vaccine is now being tested for the first time on healthy volunteers at Karolinska University Hospital. The vaccine has been developed at Karolinska Institutet and target multiple parts of the virus, making it less vulnerable to mutated strains and potentially effective against new variants.

Creative ideas were born when the NeurotechEU alliance arranged a hackathon at Karolinska Institutet. “Activities like this highlight the value of having people from other disciplines and countries – and at different stages of their careers – engage in cross-border innovative processes with each other,” says KI president Annika Östman Wernerson.

KI-Region Stockholm is the ALF region that best meets the quality criteria in the National Board of Health and Welfare’s evaluation of academic healthcare (USV). The results of the evaluation were compiled into a report published on 31 May. Research is the Stockholm region’s strongest area, but the report also comments positively on its innovation, pedagogics education and interaction with patients and their families.

KI is invited by the National Research Foundation (NRF) in Singapore to nominate participants to the Global Young Scientists Summit in Singapore 8 – 12 January 2024.

The SiiUss project (Sustainability, Inclusiveness, Integration for University Support Services), is a collaborative initiative between Karolinska Institutet and the University of the Philippines Diliman. The project introduces the SiiUss course, a learning platform designed to enhance professional development and foster sustainability, inclusiveness, and integration within university support services. The course just started with participants from both universities.

Are you planning an event for the fall of 2023 being aimed at the public? Schedule it to 2 to 9 October and be marketed as part of Nobel Calling Stockholm! Nobel Calling Stockholm offers inspiring events and educational meetings in the spirit of knowledge.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have developed a molecular method able to detect whether or not bacteria respond to antibiotics within minutes. The findings are presented in the journal Nature Microbiology and the researchers now hope to develop a simple test for doctors to use.

An important meeting was held on 11 May in Aula Medica for the KI-Region Stockholm management group. It turned out to be a packed strategy day that focused on common issues facing the group, including the work following on from the recently released Swedish Research Council audit, conducted under the ALF evaluation.

This year’s KI-SciLifeLab Symposium brought the community of KI researchers and staff affiliated to SciLifeLab closer together.

Biobank Sweden has teamed up with the Swedish regions and the National Pandemic Centre (NPC) at Karolinska Institutet to produce a new process that gives researchers access to 1.5 million COVID-19 samples. The samples are stored at the NPC and researchers applying to use them must first seek ethical approval.

Between 13 and 19 March 2023, neuroscientists around the world took the initiative to spread the word about the importance of brain science as part of the "Brain Awareness Week". The Strategic Neuroscience Research Network (StratNeuro) at Karolinska Institutet took the opportunity to initiate a recurring outreach event to spark enthusiasm and raise awareness for neuroscience research, which was also part of the global campaign.

Alone, remotely, in the middle of a pandemic – this is how life in the Brussels office of the University Alliance Stockholm Trio began for the EU veteran Dan Andrée. It went at half-speed at first, but now, two and half years later, the office in the EU’s political cradle is bursting with activities.

Close on 500 colleagues in the cancer field from Karolinska University Hospital and Karolinska Institutet gathered in Aula Medica during this year’s Karolinska CCC conference on 30–31 March. Also attending were Sahlgrenska CCC and Skåne CCC.

“We’re delighted, and the VR’s rating gives us even more leverage for our work,” says Anders Gustafsson, former vice president of KI, who has helped lead the work on the national evaluation of the quality of clinical research that has now been published by the Swedish Research Council (VR). The ALF evaluation is based on the agreement that regulates KI’s collaboration with Region Stockholm on medical training, clinical research and care development.

Region Stockholm has been given a high-quality rating by the Swedish Research Council (VR) in its evaluation of the quality of clinical research and how it is transformed into patient and societal benefit. The evaluation is important in many respects, including to the distribution of government ALF (Agreement on Clinical Research and Training) funds.

SASUF 2030 is a strategic internationalisation project uniting 40 universities from Sweden and South Africa. In collaboration with the National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa they now open a call.

Karolinska Institutet and the National University of Singapore offer a short-term exchange program for hosting 1-2 PhD students from each university per year.

Region Stockholm has launched a new action plan for precision medicine in the region. The plan, which was devised in consultation with Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska University Hospital, will allow more patients to benefit from the research being done in the field of precision medicine.

Readership of news articles written by KI researchers for The Conversation jumped 62 percent on the year in 2022. Since KI became a member two years ago, 43 researchers have penned over 42 articles, reaching around 3.8 million readers worldwide. “I have never experienced such a response to my research before,” says postdoc Filip Gedin.

Are you interested sharing your knowledge with school children or members of non-profit organisations? The Swedish non-profit organisation Public & Science (Vetenskap & Allmänhet, VA) are looking for researchers to participate in the project 'Lend a researcher'.

The Cities Partnerships Programme Stockholm, comprising UCL (University College London) and the Stockholm trio (Karolinska Institutet, KTH Royal Institute of Technology & Stockholm University) invite you to express interest in two days of workshops 17-18 April in Stockholm.

Minister for Education Mats Persson met researchers and students when he visited Karolinska Institutet on 1 February. Topics of discussion with the students included the conditions relating to clinical placements, student funding rules and the situation for overseas students and doctoral students. The researchers, for their part, talked about the progress being made in areas such as precision medicine and about KI’s preparedness for new health crises.