Briefly about KI's research

Organisation and research areas

KI’s research is administratively divided into three departmental groups with a total of 21 departments. These departments are central to the academic environment at our university, with responsibilities encompassing scientific strategy, finance, and administration within their respective areas.

Research is conducted at our campuses in Solna and Flemingsberg (North and South of Stockholm City), as well as at several hospitals and other health care facilities in the Stockholm region. Research at KI spans the entire field of life sciences; from basic research on the smallest parts of life, innovative research methods and medical technology, to clinical research to relieve and cure diseases, ageing, prevention, and global health. Currently, targeted investments are being made in areas such as artificial intelligence, quantum technology, ATMP, and defence medicine.

In 2025, the Swedish Research Council carried out a national evaluation of basic medical research, which shows that KI’s research is of world-class quality. KI has the highest citation impact in the country, and its research has led to groundbreaking discoveries in fields such as cancer biology, neuroscience and cell biology.

Research funding

Research accounts for 84 percent of KI's total annual turnover and the income for the research area amounted to SEK 7,003 million in 2025. External research grants applied for in competition correspond to 54 percent of research income (SEK 3,805 million), while direct government grants account for 35 percent (SEK 2,427 million) of research income.

External research funders

KI has for many years been successful in attracting external research funding. Among the major external research funders in 2025 can be mentioned:

• Swedish Research Council (SEK 893 million)
• EU (SEK 394 million)
• The Swedish Cancer Society (SEK 353 million)
• The Wallenberg Foundations (SEK 201 million)
• Forte (SEK 184 million)
• Swedish Heart Lung Foundation (SEK 115 million)
• Swedish Childhood Cancer Fund (SEK 100 million)
• Region Stockholm (SEK 97 million)

Researchers

KI has approximately 3,000 employed researchers, of whom just over 420 are full professors. During 2025, KI recruited 20 new professors, of whom 7 were women (35 percent). In total, 62 percent of the employees are women. The university works actively with gender equality and equal treatment within research, including through the Women in Science and Education (WISE) network and the career development programme Fellows in Gender Equal Career Development (FIELD).

KI has over 2,200 doctoral students, representing a substantial share of all doctoral students in medicine and health sciences in Sweden. Every year, about 350 doctoral students graduate from KI. In addition, about 3,500 researchers have some form of looser connection to the university, such as researchers employed by Region Stockholm or visiting researchers. 

A large proportion of KI's doctoral students and researchers come from countries other than Sweden. The working language in many research groups is English.

Scientific publications

In 2025, KI's researchers published some 7,200 scientific articles. More than 90 percent of these articles were published in collaboration with other actors outside the university, in Sweden and abroad. A large proportion of the research has some form of connection to healthcare. Many of the scientific articles are also part of the doctoral theses presented at KI.

Every year, KI's researchers publish many scientific articles in collaboration with researchers in other countries. International co-publications account for about 75 percent of all articles from KI. During the period 2022-2025, articles were published together with researchers based in about 180 different countries. The US was the country with which KI had the most co-publications, closely followed by the UK and Germany.

KI has a strong commitment to the concept of open science, which aims to enhance the quality and impact of research. During 2025, KI decided to develop a local, tiered journal list based on qualitative assessment of journals, including aspects related to open science. The journal list is part of KI’s efforts to fulfil its commitments within the international CoARA collaboration (Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment).

Clinical research

Clinical research refers to research that requires healthcare structures and resources and aims to solve a health problem or to identify factors that lead to improved health. Clinical research accounts for an estimated 60 percent of KI's scientific publications.

In 2023, the results of two national evaluations covering clinical research and its conditions were reported: the Swedish Research Council's evaluation of the quality of clinical research and the National Board of Health and Welfare's evaluation of university healthcare. In the Swedish Research Council's evaluation, KI and Region Stockholm jointly (called ALF Region Stockholm) were rated "very high quality" for the quality of scientific production and "good-high quality" for the conditions of clinical research.

Research infrastructure

KI offers a wide range of service laboratories, providing advanced equipment, services, and expertise in areas such as imaging, biostatistics, biobanking, omics, and tissue engineering. Researchers at KI also have extensive access to national and European research infrastructures.

The university annually allocates approximately SEK 190 million for research infrastructure. In 2025, this included the support of 30 core facilities and 14 national infrastructures. In addition to central support, our core facilities are partly financed with user fees. 

KI is one of the host universities for SciLifeLab, a distributed national research infrastructure with the core mission of providing technologies that facilitate the large-scale analysis of biological processes at the molecular level. During 2025, KI decided on a new, integrated organisation for research infrastructure, named Research Infrastructure Karolinska Institutet (RIKI). It will be implemented gradually over the coming years, starting in 2026.

The information above is largely taken from KI's annual reports of 2023–2025, various personell systems, and other pages on ki.se.