Joining the Life Science group

2016-11-07

Last week I joined the expert group for Life Sciences which is to support the government appointed life science coordinator, Anders Lönnberg, in his important task to develop Swedish life sciences. The group includes individuals from diverse sectors of life sciences in accordance with the group’s task to provide knowledge and experience and a picture of developments in life sciences. The group should collect opinions and provide suggestions which are then brought forward by the coordinator. It is important that KI, as the largest medical faculty in Sweden is represented in this group and I also hope that my industrial background will provide an asset. One topic that is presently on the agenda is the innovation system and how it is organized. The immediate observation is that it is a very fragmented landscape with many actors each possibly having problems to achieve critical mass. At the same time it is important to be present where ideas are being born is also important.

Sara Riggare, PhD student at LIME is also a member of the group. Sara is considered one of the most influential people in Med Tech in Sweden. She has a unique competence as researcher, entrepreneur and patient combined with an exceptional network and social skills. When Sara talks about the educated and well informed patient as a resource for research and health care, people listen! Sara wants to empower the patient!

Last week we also had a short visit by the Prime minister of the Czeck republic, Bohuslav Sobotka. He visit Labs at Fyfa and had presentations from two of the group leaders, Igor Adameyko and Andrei Chagin and Igor also gave a Lab tour. The lab tour and the presentations were really well prepared and interesting, a great opportunity also for me to visit KI labs and learn about some of all the exciting science that is going on at our university.