Swedish science is synonymous with Carl Linnaeus and the Nobel Prizes in science and medicine. Perhaps less well-known is that Sweden is also home to Karolinska Institutet, one of the world’s leading biomedical universities.
One of Sweden's best kept secrets
KI, as Karolinska is affectionately known, is known for excellence in research and teaching. Not one to rest on its laurels, however, KI is pursuing an aggressive strategy to strengthen its position as one of the world's leading centers of medical education and research – setting its sights on becoming Europe's foremost medical university by 2010.
A cornerstone of this strategy includes a spate of new master’s and PhD programs, given in English. This move also addresses the challenges posed by the Bologna process – a commitment by 45 European countries to undertake a series of reforms in order to achieve greater consistency and portability across their higher education systems.
Photo: Hans Bjurling / www.imagebank.sweden.se
Public Health Sciences – promoting health, safety and quality of life
Dr. David Titelman, who co-designed the master’s in Public Health Sciences, says the program has unique specializations: health economics and health promotion, safety promotion, applied health nutrition, and suicide prevention and mental health promotion.
“The aim has been to recruit students who are already active in different fields; for example, mental health issues,” Titelman says.
He says the program seeks to “provide not only a very high standard of academic training but also something that is useful in that type of profession.” He hopes students will be able to take away “analytic and intellectual skills, rather than practical or clinical ones.”
Australian student Nicole Tschaut, who studies health economics, says that diversity is “the major bonus” of the program. “You can almost experience the world in one classroom. That’s pretty amazing,” she says.
Biomedicine – creating advanced skills for disease treatment
Study opportunities ripe for the picking also include a two-year master’s program in biomedicine run by Dr. Dan Grandér. “We want it to be fully open internationally,” he says. “We really want to recruit top international students.”
Grandér says that one hallmark of the program is the cooperation between medicine and molecular biology. The goal is “to understand molecular and cellular biology but always with a focus on what this can do for patients – to create diagnostics and treatment.”
The program covers four areas: cardiovascular, neurological and infectious diseases, as well as cancer. “We have one program, but there are a lot of opportunities to create individual profiles depending on what electives you take and what projects you are involved with,” Grandér says.
Kris von Stedingk, a Canadian student in the Biomedicine program, says that the first course he took in the program was so “incredible” that he is now planning to go to medical school rather than working within the pharmaceutical industry. “I had never really been interested in human medicine before, but after taking this course, it has intrigued me,” he says.
Von Stedingk cites small class sizes and the one-course-at-a-time structure as advantages. “It’s much more focused and also helps you learn a lot more.”
Photo: Ulf Hinds / www.imagebank.sweden.se
Inter-university collaboration – medicine and technology hand-in-hand
The interface between medicine and technology has led to many great discoveries, and a result of this is a visible trend in the creation of several new master’s degree programs, reflecting in particular the increased collaboration between KI and KTH, the Royal Institute of Technology.
New programs starting later this year include joint programs in medical technology, and computational and systems biology – which has a biotech and entrepreneurship component in association with the Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship, for students with an interest in research commercialization.
PhD opportunities – from the classroom to the laboratory
KI’s two-year master's programs prepare students to work in industry or to continue on with PhD studies. Several of the course coordinators say that they see the master's courses as a recruitment base for PhD programs.
The biomedicine master’s, for instance, even offers several second-year courses together with current PhD students. It can also give students a head start if they want to continue. “If you spend almost a year in a project in the lab, that will be a fantastic start for a PhD,” Grandér says.
PhD opportunities at KI that have an international focus include joint programs with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the US and the Agency For Science, Technology And Research (A*STAR) in Singapore, both of which include neuroscience tracks.
Jamie Mong, a Singaporean PhD student studying nerve cell development in a joint A*STAR/KI program, praises the open spirit she has found at KI.
“Things can get very competitive in labs,” she says. “Here, I like the environment – there’s this collaborative thing in the air. We collaborate and interact with people in other groups as well. People are really friendly and helpful.”
The spotlight on neuroscience will intensify this year with a new partnership between KI and the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan, led by KI’s Professor Abdel El Manira. And the Australasian slant continues to gain prominence with new bioinformatics graduate partnership programs emerging between KI and RIKEN, some even stretching to Griffith University in Australia.
Matti Nikkola, Director or Graduate Studies at the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology. Photo: Charlotte West
Interested? What to do next.
KI seeks excellent, proactive students, says Matti Nikkola, Director of Graduate Studies at KI’s Department of Cell and Molecular Biology. In turn, he says “they can expect excellence in research and also good support in their PhD studies: supervision and a well-functioning lab environment, and formalized PhD level courses.”
Nikkola says that prospective students should directly contact the KI department in their respective field. All PhD positions are also fully-funded for four years.
“KI is a dynamic university and luckily we have good resources and can move at a very fast pace,” he says. “We have a favorable critical mass because we are a university focusing on a single concept: human health. We want to work for human health with the help of research and education.”
Related links
New application procedure for master's programs in Sweden — Article
www.studera.nu/english — Register for master's programs online
Matti Nikkola profile — Meet students and faculty
Mary-Rose Hoja
Mary-Rose Hoja is a Scottish-born writer with first-hand experience of the wonders of international PhD studenthood at KI. This article is a bold journalistic departure from her normal pursuits of writing for the biomedical field.