This year’s Fernström Foundation Nordic Prize, with prize money of SEK 1 million, goes to the internationally renowned diabetes researcher Leif Groop from Lund University in Sweden.

Leif Groop’s speciality has been referred to as ‘gene fishing’. It involves fishing up the genes that contribute to diabetes in one of its forms from the human genome. He has also done a lot of research on the different forms of the disease. Professor Groop was the first to describe a hybrid form between type 1 and type 2 diabetes called LADA, and has contributed to knowledge of several other previously unknown hybrid forms.