Greater Uppsala Metropolitan Area
Beside my research career, I have extensive experience in academic leadership at the Section, Department, and Faculty level. In my most recent acedemic leadership roles as Vice-Dean (with responsibility for research and PhD education) and Deputy Dean (overall leadership with a focus on research), I have worked with overarching questions like research strategy development, strategic long-term recruitment plans and higher academic appointments. During 2022 and 2023 we planned and performed a re-organization of our faculty structure. The implementation of the new structure became a fact at the start of 2024 and the new departments are currently taking shape: developing new ways of working, collaborating, and managing. I aim for inclusive leadership with clear responsiblities and decision-taking at the right levels. Understanding complexity is one of my key attributes. My research area is mainly within quantitative genetics where we study so-called 'complex traits' that are the result of multiple genetic en environmental factors, as well as their interactions. We use statistics to make inferences about the proportion of variation that can be attributed to genetic factors and use this information in selective breeding to rank selection candidates. Since the early '90s we have started to include information at the DNA level to pinpoint areas of the genome that contribute to the genetic variation. A large part of my career has involved QTL mapping, the detection of genome regions affecting complex traits. In livestock, this has focussed mainly on traits of direct economical interest like milk yield in cattle, meat quality in pigs etc. To date, many QTL have been published for a broad range of traits but only very few have been characterised at the molecular level. Micro-array technology and next-generation sequencing allow measuring gene expression levels for thousands of genes simultaneously. This new source of information, transcriptomics, has been used in diagnostics and in many experiments that are aimed at identifying genes that are differentially expressed between two ‘treatments’. Large-scale applications of micro-arrays to combine gene mapping methodology and gene expression studies in order to unravel the genetic regulation of gene expression haven proposed recently and application to date mostly involve model systems and/or organisms. This area of research has been coined ‘Genetical Genomics’ and is similar to traditional QTL mapping except that instead of looking at tens of traits, we are now analysing thousands of gene transcripts.
In this new assignment, which is also also a new role at SLU, I will be repsonsible for research infrastructure. This covers a very broad area including physical infrastructure like experimental farms and greenhouses, digital infrastructures like databases and computing facilties as well as SLU's participation in national and international infrastructures.
Part time until end of 2010, then full time. I was head of the Section on Quantitative Genetics in the Department of Animal Breeding and Genetics until the end of 2016. From January 2017 until March 2019 I shared the Head of Department position with Professor Lotta Rydhmer. From April 2019 I have been Vice Dean of Research and PhD education at the faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Sciences at SLU, followed by an appointment as Deputy Dean (Prodekan) rom January 2022 until December 2024. From January 2025, I return to full-time in my research role
3 year appointment as Deputy Dean, remained active as Professor of Animal Breeding for 20% of my time.
Group leader in the division of Genetics and Genomics. TUPE transfer into University of Edinburgh October 2007 50% from October 2010 until end of the year. I currently hold a deputy group leader post in which I contribute to two research projects.
Career track appointment leading up to promotion to Group Leader in 2007.
Post-doctoral research into QTL detection in commercial populations of pigs and poultry