Karolinska Institute

Overview

Karolinska Institute

Karolinska Institute (KI), or Karolinska Institutet in Swedish, is a public research-led medical university located in Solna, Sweden. It was established in 1810 by King Karl XIII before being licensed in 1874 to confer medical degrees. In 1895, the testament of Alfred Nobel bequeathed the right to select the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine recipients to the institution. KI is acknowledged as one of the best educational institutions in Europe with contributions to the fields of medicine, biology, and genetics.

Karolinska Institute Key Statistics

KI is composed of 22 departments, including the Department of Biosciences and Nutrition, the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, the Department of Clinical Neuroscience, and the Department of Global Public Health. The institute offers a wide variety of undergraduate and postgraduate degree programs in the field of medicine.

Other Karolinska Institute key statistics include its 6,481 students and 4,735 staff. The university has two campuses located in Solna and in Flemingsberg and they contain facilities, such as the lecture hall complex Aula Medica with a 1,000-seat auditorium, and 100 conference seats as well as a cafe and two restaurants. There is also the university library with seven units and three departments, namely, the user support and teaching department, infrastructure for research information department, and operational support department.

Karolinska Institute Research

KI is responsible for the largest share of medical research conducted in the country. Among the research areas of the institute are cancer and hematology, circulation and respiration, endocrinology and metabolism, healthcare sciences and aging, and neuroscience and mental health. For 2020, Karolinska Institute received research funding amounting to 6.1 billion SEK from sources, such as the government, the Swedish Research Council, the Swedish Cancer Society, and the European Union.

Medicine, biology, and genetics are the top fields of Karolinska Institute research. Their work outputs have been presented at conferences, such as the Web Science conference in 2010, ACM SIGMM Conference on Multimedia Systems in 2017, and the Medicine 2.0 Conference in 2014.

The most cited article from the institute is Emsley et al.’s (2010) “Features and development of Coot.” which appeared in Acta Crystallographica Section D-biological Crystallography and has more than 18,600 citations to date. The second most cited publication is Craig et al.’s (2003) “International physical activity questionnaire: 12-country reliability and validity,” featured in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise and has over 16,200 citations.

In addition, the third most cited work is Ng et al.’s (2014) “Global, regional, and national prevalence of overweight and obesity in children and adults during 1980–2013: A systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013,” published in The Lancet with over 11,800 citations so far.

National and international research centers at KI include the National Center for Suicide Research and Prevention, Karolinska Comprehensive Cancer Center, and the Center of Excellence for Sustainable Health. There are also collaborative research centers, such as the Aging Research Center, the Center for Bioinformatics and Biostatistics, and the Center for Hematology and Regenerative Medicine. The institute also has the Center for Alzheimer's Research, Center for Global Health, and the Center for Infectious Disease Research.