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Career portraits of KI alumni

A wish to make a real difference – Career Path of Linnea Eriksson

Her first dream job was to become an archeologist and live the life of Indiana Jones. After realizing, that what she has known from books is not even nearly as exciting as she thought, she wanted to be a veterinarian. Currently, Linnea Eriksson holds a Ph.D. degree in Medical Sciences and works as a Clinical Trial Manager, but all of the above seem to share at least two common features: genuine interest in science and a wish to make a real difference.

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Ljubica Matic – from a journalist to an outstanding scientist

Ljubica Matic is an Assistant Professor and a Team Leader of Vascular Molecular Medicine within the Division of Vascular Surgery at Karolinska University Hospital. Her scientific achievements are impressive. During the time she spent in the Vascular Surgery Group (2012 – present) she published 8 first-author papers, 1 last name paper and was a co-author on more than 42 publications, including 4 collaborative Nature-level pieces. Her teaming up with Professor Ulf Hedin resulted in an unprecedented multi-omics exploration of Biobank of Karolinska Endarterectomies (BiKE), which significantly increased the number of currently active projects relying on this resource to more than 70. In 2018 she was a co-recipient of the Heart-Lung Foundation’s Big Gift Grant of 15 million SEK and has been awarded the prestigious Sven and Ebba Hagberg Prize by Karolinska and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for her outstanding research on molecular mechanisms of smooth muscle cell function in atherosclerosis.

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“Remember to bottle the grand feelings”

Magnus Wetterhall was hooked on mass spectrometry during his master’s thesis and went on to conduct a PhD in analytical chemistry at Uppsala University. “I started my PhD in the late 90s when mass spectrometry was far from as developed as it is today. We were working on technical solutions and methods to enhance the analysis. This new field of research was very exciting, and I was eager to make new discoveries.”

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“Use Your Expertise outside the Laboratory”

Bastian Thaa, a Senior Medical Writer, got his PhD in Berlin, Germany, in 2011. After his PhD studies, Bastian did his first postdoc in the same laboratory and then did a second postdoc at Karolinska Institutet. He returned to Germany and tried to raise his own money for an independent research project but unfortunately failed. He came back to KI to finish a project that he had started. Publishing this work in PLoS Pathogens was the final achievement on his academic path before he left academia. He got a job in a medical communication agency in Berlin and has been a “Senior Medical Writer” for nearly two years now.

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“Science takes you to new places”

Gunilla Karlsson Hedestam, professor at the department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology (MTC) at Karolinska Institutet, started her PhD in biochemistry at the University of Oxford and continued as a postdoc at Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. After her postdoc, she worked in a biotech company for 3 years and returned to academia afterwards. Now, her group focuses on the function of B lymphocytes and immunogenetics. She is one of the two researchers at Karolinska Institutet who received the ERC Advance Grant 2017 (granted in 2018) from the European Research Council.

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“S.O.S. – Stability Over Status”

Knut Steffensen left his position as Associate Professor at Karolinska Institutet to work as Medical Advisor in a company. “Although many people think the opposite, after 20 years in academia I’m still connected to it and I think I could still go back, not necessarily in research. There’s need for industrial experience also in academia, and more doors are opened now than before”.

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“Resilience, grit and passion: the key for success in academia”

“Never forget the fun part of your work and choose the right mentor to work with.” This is the secret of Myriam Aouadi, who works as Principal Investigator at Karolinska Institutet since 2015. “At every step of my career I was about to choose between academia and industry: I was not seeing lots of opportunities in academia, while I really wanted a stable job and a good salary. But I still like academia better.”

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