Mathias Uhlén is a world-renowned microbiology researcher at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Since 2003, he has led the Human Protein Atlas (HPA) project, an international effort to systematically map the human proteome and transcriptome. Among his many other achievements, he was also the founding director of the Science for Life Laboratory (SciLifeLab), one of the largest molecular biology research laboratories in Europe, and created 23 life sciences companies. Uhlén discusses the evolution of Sweden’s life sciences ecosystem, the impact of the Human Protein Atlas on medical research globally, as well as the role of the SciLifeLab and strategic collaborations between the ‘Stockholm trio’ in driving innovation in Swedish life sciences.
Here, university researchers retain the intellectual property rights to their discoveries and inventions. As a result, universities are incentivized to help turn inventions into innovations, and take stakes in the companies created
