MIMS Director Oliver Billker as new Speaker for the Nordic EMBL Partnership for Molecular Medicine
The Nordic EMBL Partnership is pleased to announce that Professor Oliver Billker, Director of MIMS (The Laboratory for Molecular Infection Medicine Sweden) has been named as the fifth Speaker of the Nordic EMBL Partnership.
At the beginning of 2023, Professor Billker took over the Speaker role from Professor Mark Daly, FIMM Director, who was appointed as Speaker for the Nordic EMBL Partnership in September 2021. Professor Billker has been MIMS Director since fall 2018, taking over this role from the Founding Director of MIMS, Professor Bernt Eric Uhlin. Oliver Billker holds a professorship in Molecular Genetics at Umeå University. His research focuses on the molecular basis of malaria transmission by mosquitoes, working towards discovering new targets for transmission blocking drugs and vaccines. The Billker lab also worsk out the biological principles for why some mosquitoes can transmit malaria while others cannot, and how the behaviour of a mosquito may affect its ability to transmit infection. This is important if we want to predict how disease control or climate change may affect the transmission of malaria.
The Speaker gives the voice to the Nordic EMBL Partnership in strategic and official matters
The Speaker of the Nordic EMBL Partnership channels the insights of all four Nordic nodes regarding general matters within the Partnership, also acts on behalf of the Partnership when it is needed, and the Speaker contributes to promoting visibility of the Nordic EMBL Partnership at international level.
“Molecular medicine is a fast-moving research field that affects all our lives. Nordic collaboration in this area is of great importance, and our partnership with EMBL exemplifies this. We see many ways of broadening and deepening our interactions further in the future, and I am personally excited by the opportunity to facilitate these developments", says Oliver Billker.
Professor Kjetil Taskén, former Director of NCMM, hold the Speaker role between 2013-2017, followed by Professor Bernt Eric Uhlin, former MIMS Director, between 2017-2018, when Professor Poul Nissen, Director of DANDRITE, took over and acted as Speaker until 2021. Professor Mark Daly, Director of FIMM, was named as the new Speaker in 2021 and acted in this role until the end of 2022, when MIMS Director Professor Oliver Billker took over the Speaker for the Nordic EMBL Partnership role.