Olli Kallioniemi is the new Director for SciLifeLab
The board of Science for Life Laboratory (SciLifeLab) has appointed Professor Olli Kallioniemi as new Director, starting July 1, 2015. Olli Kallioniemi succeeds Professor Mathias Uhlén.
SciLifeLab, a national center for molecular biosciences, has appointed its second Director since the establishment in 2010. SciLifeLab is a collaboration between the four universities: Karolinska Institutet, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm University and Uppsala University. The center was appointed a national center by the Swedish government in 2013.
Olli Kallioniemi will join SciLifeLab as a professor at Karolinska Institutet and continue as a part-time Research Director of the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM) at the University of Helsinki where he has been the Director since 2007.
“It is an exciting opportunity to start as Director for SciLifeLab. I look forward to working with the entire staff and stakeholders of the center to develop new opportunities for science and novel enabling technologies. An excellent base has already been established and will be built on to take SciLifeLab to the absolute global front-line in several fields of life science. There are also many new opportunities for collaborations, both locally in Sweden and internationally.”
After receiving his M.D. and Ph.D. at the University of Tampere, Finland, Olli Kallionimei continued his career at UC San Francisco and was appointed faculty at the National Human Genome Research Institute, at the NIH, USA. Subsequently, he founded and developed the Medical Biotechnology group at the University of Turku, together with the VTT Technical Research Centre, Finland.
His research spans cancer biology and genomics, molecular pathology and translational research, high-throughput technology development and data analysis. He is also a strong propagator for P4 medicine: Predictive, Preventive, Personalized and Participatory health care.
“For Karolinska Institutet this is a spectacular recruitment to a position that is vital to Sweden and Swedish research,” says Professor Hans-Gustaf Ljunggren, dean of research at Karolinska Institutet and member of the SciLifeLab board.
Photo: Veikko Somerpuro