Professor Anna Martling has been appointed Scientific Director Life Science at Karolinska Institutet (KI).

This is a new mission at KI, which involves coordinating internal initiatives and representing KI externally in the field. One of its main arenas of concern is the KI-Region Stockholm collaboration organisation.

KI’s Strategy 2030 emphasises KI’s commitment to being an engine for life science. An example of this is that the university has taken part in the government’s former liaison group for health and life science, tasked with producing the national life-science strategy.

“Anna Martling has built a large network and created an important position for herself in relation to relevant regional and national life-science actors,” says KI president, Annika Östman Wernerson. “She has taken steps that have improved conditions for translational research and KI’s influence in its interactions with a number of partners in healthcare, industry and politics. I’m delighted to be able to secure her continuing commitment.”

Anna Martling

“There are an incredible number of important initiatives, in which we need to create a unified structure in order to jointly propel research and healthcare forward,” says Martling. “We need to plug in together on these initiatives, coordinate ourselves and take turns leading certain questions. I think we need to do this if we’re to get as much as possible out of each individual initiative.”

Anna Martling, consultant and former dean of KI North, has spent the past three years leading KI’s efforts to implement precision medicine in healthcare, a remit that is now being expanded to cover KI’s overall work in life science.

“I’ll be focusing in my new role on our initiatives in life science to keep pressing the issue and upping the pace of development. Since starting in January, I’ve been gathering key persons working within existing life-science initiatives so that together we can identify how to drive our work forwards,” she says.

To KI Martling stresses the importance of partnerships in research and development.

“Partnerships and collaborations are crucial,” she says. “If we’re to change and modernize, we must work together not just in the healthcare sector but also with the business community and other external actors. Medtech and the pharmaceutical industry are two examples of sectors in which much of the important product development is taking place.”

Photo of Anna Martling: Andreas Andersson