Jan Staffan Normark, born 1945, is a Swedish

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 physician, microbiologist

Microbiologist

A microbiologist is a scientist who works in the field of microbiology. Microbiologists study organisms called microbes. Microbes can take the form of bacteria, viruses, fungi, and protists...

 and infectious disease

Infectious disease

Infectious diseases, also known as communicable diseases, contagious diseases or transmissible diseases comprise clinically evident illness resulting from the infection, presence and growth of pathogenic biological agents in an individual host organism...

 researcher. He grew up in Umeå

Umeå

- Transport :The road infrastructure in Umeå is well-developed, with two European highways passing through the city. About 4 km from the city centre is the Umeå City Airport...

 and was awarded his Ph.D.

Ph.D.

A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

 at Umeå University

Umeå University

Umeå University is a university in Umeå in the mid-northern region of Sweden. The university was founded in 1965 and is the fifth oldest within Sweden's present borders....

 in 1971. At the end of the 1970s, he was one of the first Swedish scientists to utilise the new genetic engineering

Genetic engineering

Genetic engineering, also called genetic modification, is the direct human manipulation of an organism's genome using modern DNA technology. It involves the introduction of foreign DNA or synthetic genes into the organism of interest...

 tools in infection-related research. In 1980, he was made a professor at Umeå University, then the university's youngest. 1989 he was recruited as professor of molecular microbiology

Molecular microbiology

Molecular microbiology is the branch of microbiology devoted to the study of the molecular principles of the physiological processes involved in the life cycle of prokaryotic and eukaryotic microorganisms such as bacteria, viruses, unicellular algae, fungi, and protozoa...

 to Washington University in St. Louis

Washington University in St. Louis

Washington University in St. Louis is a private research university located in suburban St. Louis, Missouri. Founded in 1853, and named for George Washington, the university has students and faculty from all fifty U.S. states and more than 110 nations...

. 1993 he returned to Sweden as professor of infectious disease control, in particular clinical bacteriology

Bacteriology

Bacteriology is the study of bacteria. This subdivision of microbiology involves the identification, classification, and characterization of bacterial species...

, at Karolinska Institutet

Karolinska Institutet

Karolinska institutet is a medical university in Solna within the Stockholm urban area, Sweden, and one of Europe's largest medical universities...

. From 1999 to 2005 he served as the Executive Director of the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF). In 2008 he was active at Umeå University to build up a research group within bioinformatics

Bioinformatics

Bioinformatics is the application of computer science and information technology to the field of biology and medicine. Bioinformatics deals with algorithms, databases and information systems, web technologies, artificial intelligence and soft computing, information and computation theory, software...

 and infection research. Much of his research in the 2000s have focussed on pneumococcus.

Normark was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences or Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden. The Academy is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization which acts to promote the sciences, primarily the natural sciences and mathematics.The Academy was founded on 2...

 in 1987 and took up the position as the Academy's permanent secretary on July 1, 2010, when he succeeded Gunnar Öquist

Gunnar Öquist

Gunnar Öquist, born 1941, is a Swedish biologist and professor of plant physiology at Umeå University, and served as the permanent secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences from 2003 to 2010....

.

1992 he was awarded the Göran Gustafsson Prize in medicine and in 1999 he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences

Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences

The Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences or Kungl. Ingenjörsvetenskapsakademien , founded in 1919 by King Gustaf V, is one of the Royal Academies in Sweden...

.

Staffan Normark is married to Birgitta Henriques-Normark, also a professor and researcher within infectious disease at Karolinska Institutet.

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