New director at SciLifeLab Uppsala

How does it feel to be new on the job?

It feels really fun and exciting. I’ve been looking forward to this a lot, but naturally I’m also nervous and a little on edge.

You worked at the Swedish Research Council for 20 years, but before that you were a researcher in Uppsala. Tell us about that!

As a PhD student, I was at the Uppsala Biomedical Centre, in Erik Fries’s group at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Microbiology, and I really enjoyed it there. It was a great environment for doing a PhD, with lots of knowledgeable researchers around. After earning my PhD, I had a postdoctoral position, first in an EU project at SLU/Uppsala University and then in the USA.

When I got back, I joined Niklas Dahl’s research group at Rudbeck Laboratory. I brought my husband with me from the USA, and we soon realised that we would have to compete for research grants, which I wasn’t too keen on. So, I applied for a job at the Swedish Research Council and was lucky enough to get hired there.

Do you have experience from the Swedish Research Council that could be useful at SciLifeLab?

Yes, I think it’s a good idea to “switch sides”. Many people at the Swedish Research Council come from academia and vice versa. I understand how the Swedish Research Council works and also have good insight into how the department works. And now I have a greater understanding of the university world. Both the Swedish Research Council and Uppsala University have the same vision. We believe in research as an important player in society, but we have slightly different approaches.

What I find really exciting about SciLifeLab is that it is a research infrastructure. Today, it is incredibly important to have the right conditions for conducting research. As a long-standing delegate for a major international research infrastructure, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), I see that good research infrastructures and, of course, collaboration and cooperation are becoming increasingly important – and SciLifeLab does them so well.

Is there anything in particular you want to work on at SciLifeLab?

I was involved when, in the 2008 research bill, the Swedish Research Council was tasked with announcing and assessing strategic research environments, with SciLifeLab being granted research funding a few years later. Since then, I have been following SciLifeLab from a distance. It is a well-functioning research infrastructure that is popular and important to a large part of the research community, especially in life sciences. There is a lot that works very well, but there are always things that can be tweaked, especially if you come in as an outsider with a different perspective.

As cool as it is to have all these different sites, it is also a challenge since they all have their own cultures and belong to different universities. They need to somehow be united in a common organisation. But it will be fun – I’ve been struck by the pride and desire for development here, a bit like a pioneering spirit in a positive sense.

Annica Hulth