Kerstin Lindblad-Toh

Kerstin Lindblad-Toh is a professor in comparative genomics at Uppsala University and the Scientific Director of Vertebrate Genome Biology at the Broad Institute.

At the Broad Institute Kerstin is responsible for the Mammalian Genome Project to annotate the human genome for functional constraint as well as for a large number of vertebrate genome projects several of which emphasize the detection of selective sweeps. She also leads the dog disease-mapping group. Her group has developed several SNP chip that has been used to identify several canine disease genes.

In Uppsala, Kerstin’s research emphasizes the dog as a comparative model for human diseases. Her group is mapping of over 20 diseases including cancer, autoimmune, cardiac and neurological diseases. Many of the findings are now being translated to human patients cohorts.

Kerstin is also the Director Science for Life Laboratory Uppsala, a novel strategic research center with the vision of being an internationally leading center that develops, applies, and provides access to large-scale technologies for molecular biosciences with a focus on translational medicine and on evolutionary and systems biology. SciLifeLab Uppsala is modeled on the Broad.

An author on over 100 papers, Kerstin has received several scholarships and awards from the Svenska Institutet Scholarship for Research Abroad and the Swedish Medical Research Council and the prestigious European Young Investigator award (EURYI), the Fernströms price and the Théreus price.

Kerstin received her Ph.D. from the Department of Molecular Medicine, Karolinska Institute, Sweden, in 1998 studying trinucleotide repeat disorders. While a postdoctoral fellow at the Whitehead Institute/MIT Center for Genome Research, now part of the Broad Institute, Kerstin worked on several projects, including mouse SNP discovery, the development of genotyping technologies, and association studies in human disease.