News archive

Last month, Karolinska Institutet launched the first-ever Sustainable Health and the 2030 Agenda PhD course, organized by the Department of Global Public Health (GPH) and the Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Health (CESH). Offered within the framework of the Doctoral Programme in Health Care Science (PUF-V), the course received incredible feedback and enthusiasm from participants. It is now planned to be offered again in Autumn 2025.

Sven Carlsson has been appointed as new head of the Legal, Planning and Economic Affairs Office. He comes from the position of CFO at SLU, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

A delegation from Karolinska Institutet (KI), led by KI President Annika Östman Wernerson, travelled to Uganda and Rwanda in November 2024. The delegation visited Makerere University in Uganda and met with representatives from the University of Rwanda and the University of Global Health Equity in Rwanda, emphasizing Karolinska Institutet’s commitment to global collaborations, which rely on strong relationships, contextual knowledge, and robust infrastructure.

KI’s ambition is to halve its emissions of greenhouse gases by 2030 and become climate neutral. In 2018, KI topped the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency’s list of the ten public authorities with the greatest CO₂ footprint from long-haul flights. It is gratifying to find that in its 2023 environmental management report, KI is no longer on that list.

The collaborative work of KIRI Fellows was chosen as one of the top 20 breakthroughs abstracts of the year.

The adoption of the hybrid work model in the KI administration led to better health and less stress for the staff, according to a recent study. The research project, which looked into the effects of the more flexible approach that was taken during the COVID-19 pandemic, provides valuable insights that will inform the development of new workplace models for the future at KI.

Now you can read the 2024 operational plan for the professional services at KI in Swedish and English. It is a new model that the departments within professional services, the University Library and the units Teaching and Learning, and Medical History and Cultural Heritage are the first to test for 2024.

The web page Research Support & Services has recently been developed to provide an overview of the support and specialised competences available to all researchers, both at their departments and at other units at KI.

Karolinska Institutet signs an agreement on collaboration with Huddinge municipality – the focus will be on equity in health and prevention, for a healthy life. On Tuesday, October 25, KI's President Ole Petter Ottersen and Huddinge municipality’s Director Camilla Broo signed the agreement.

“Our planet, our health – an intergenerational dialogue” – the title of this year’s Rosling Seminar at Karolinska Institutet. The seminar, which was held 5 October, was jointly arranged by KI and the WHO with participants attending on site and online.

About half of the Swedish population feels a strong climate worry. This is normal because the climate threat is real, says researcher Fabian Lenhard, who is starting a study on climate change. The research project will be attempting to channel worry about climate change into sustainable development.

Bringing together expertise, offering attractive training and providing a hub for collaboration. This is the vision for the Stockholm Trio for Sustainable Actions - a new initiative from Karolinska Institutet, KTH and Stockholm University to further contribute to sustainable societal development.

Partnership and cooperation are necessary to accelerate the work to achieve the global goals – and this is where academia plays an important role. This emerged during the seminar "New Partnerships for Human and Planetary Health" arranged by Karolinska Institutet, KTH and Stockholm University in May.

Many of society’s challenges, such as the climate issue, are too complex to be solved singlehandedly by different actors. Partnership and collaboration are necessary if the work of reaching the global goals is to be accelerated – and here academia plays an important part. This is the view of representatives of the Stockholm Trio, ahead of their May seminar showcasing how they mobilise to improve the health of people and the planet.

The organisation Climate Students recently published the report Climate Action Ranking, where they rank Sweden's higher education institutions according to their climate work. In this year’s report, KI came in third place.

New investments are now being implemented to strengthen Karolinska Institutet’s position as a pioneering research university. Many of these investments are aimed at more junior researchers and include the KI Research Incubator (KIRI), a virtual forum for multidisciplinary collaboration. Two other initiatives are also in the pipeline – a mentor and coaching programme and a new network to enhance the qualification prospects for female researchers and teachers.

In January, Karolinska Institutet will become a member of the international news platform The Conversation. This will provide another platform for our researchers to bring their knowledge to the general public. The initiative is part of the Communications and Public Relations Office’s commitment to Strategy 2030 and includes helping researchers to write popular science articles in English. 

For a little more than 1.5 years, the harmonized professional services programme has focused on coordinating work methods and processes. The programme, which is soon to be wrapped up, has been a starting point for further work.

What lessons have we learned during the COVID-19 pandemic and what are the primary hurdles that must be removed to attain equitable and sustainable health? These were the focal points of the Stockholm Life Science Conference 2021 that took place on the 25th of May. Three areas that were identified as important conditions for future innovations were collaboration, communication and accessibility to data.

There are many questions surrounding how best to communicate your operations and how to find the right support to do so. In the communications subproject within the project Coherent operational support, work has been started to make it even clearer what communications support is available – the goal is to produce a kind of service catalogue for KI's employees.

Initially, the project was to focus on the budget process in externally funded research projects. But it became clear, quite early on, that something else was to be prioritised. Ideas on how to better support researchers emerged, based on the vision of a harmonised professional service.

To succeed in the international competition, researchers at Karolinska Institutet need secure access to cutting-edge technology as well as a wide range of basic core-facilities. The Research Committee has therefore adopted a strategy for activities related to core-facilities and research infrastructure until 2024.

Last autumn, KI announced an new internal funding for work on sustainable development initiatives. After fierce competition, five applications have now been selected to share one million SEK.

Karolinska Institutet has signed an agreement with Wellcome Leap that enabled KI to join the Leap Health Breakthrough Network. This global network comprises many leading academic and research institutions across six continents, that are committed to solving the world’s most serious global health challenges.

Simplifying processes for research-related agreements is one of the main goals of the sub-project within the programme Harmonized professional services.

Initially, the work was sluggish for the members of the project group Accounting within the programme 'A harmonized professional services'. Over the past few months, they have developed a collaboration that has profoundly changed the way they work.

Purchasing and procurement, a sub-project within the project Harmonised professional services, has come to coordinate and centralize the purchasing coordinator organisation. Six to seven full-time positions within the organisation are being reorganized and will now be incorporated in the Central Administration.

Karolinska Institutet's information management strategy was developed in Spring 2019 and is part of Strategy 2030. The aim is to create concrete, common and established ways forward for the management of information and data at Karolinska Institutet.