Michael Fored

I have been nominated for this year's election of teacher representatives to the Consistory, which is Karolinska Institutet's university board and highest decision-making body. I accepted the nomination in order to be able to contribute to an overall view of the Consistory's decision so that both education, basic research, clinical research and administration will function optimally at our medical university. Well-functioning competition favours development and innovation, but decisions about focus and resource allocation can create internal competition within our university. We compete but we also need to work together to function as a medical university.

I am Senior Lecturer and Consultant at the Clinical Epidemiology Unit, and the Director of Research Education at the Department of Medicine, Solna with more than 200 doctoral candidates. A great variety of research is performed at my department, and I get insights in laboratory- as well as clinical research, and research education.

I studied to be a doctor at the Karolinska Institutet during the 1980s. I then moved to Sundsvall to continue my vocational training to become a nephrologist. As a newly qualified specialist, I felt the need to know how knowledge is created, and I was drawn to Uppsala to train in research. My entire department eventually moved to the Karolinska Institutet and became the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics. When I did my doctorate in 2003, I was recruited to the Department of Medicine in Solna and the Unit for Clinical Epidemiology to build a functioning system for pharmaceutical epidemiological research on new immunomodulating drugs against rheumatism.

It has been said that I am a "process guy". I like "when it works" and don't have to stand in the front row to be seen. I have been involved in the SACO council in KI's collaborative organization and in the recruitment committee. I have sat on the board of docents, was the central director of studies in the research education, and was a member of the research education board. I was operations manager for Karolinska University Hospital's unit for clinical epidemiology in the FoUU staff. Nowadays, I am part of the department's management team for Medicn, Solna, and am KI chairman of the FoU committee at St. Göran's hospital. I am director of studies for research education at my KI institution and sit on KI's committee for research education with assignments in several working groups within clinical research.

My involvement in making research and education work has of course had a negative impact on my own research career. I have my own research group but mostly devote myself to providing methodological support within the framework of Clinicum and the clinical research school in epidemiology.

Clinical Epidemiology
Collaborating as knowledgeable in epidemiology methods in clinical research
projects within a broad range of medical conditions (i.e. nephrology,
rheumatology, dermatology, odontology, pharmacology, cardiology, infectious
diseases, occupational medicine, and health informatics).
Pharmacoepidemiology
Mainly acting as a senior scientific advisor in post-marketing safety
surveillance projects of novel pharmacological treatments of inflammatory
diseases. Studies at the Karolinska Institutet Centre for
Pharmacoepidemiology.
Transportation Safety Epidemiology
Introducing register-based epidemiology in the rather unexplored area of
“risk factor research” in road traffic, in particular among
motorcyclists.