Confirmed speakers (Order of presentation at the NORDIC-PCC 2025)

Anders Hviid

Affiliation: 
Department of Epidemiology Research, Statens Serum Institut, Denmark
Professor of pharmacoepidemiology

Bio:
A key research interest of Anders Hviid is the understanding of the effects of vaccines and infections on chronic disease outcomes. This is exemplified by his recent focus on the Covid-19 pandemic, where he has contributed to landmark studies on the effects of the Covid-19 vaccines and SARS-CoV-2 infection. His work is characterized by the use of large-scale population datasets, primarily from Denmark and across the Nordic region. His research has often been conducted with international collaborators, and he has led several successful multinational studies. Anders Hviid is the PI of the large nationwide survey on PCC in Denmark, EFTER-COVID.

Fredrik Nyberg

Affiliation:
School of Public Health and Community Medicine, Institute of Medicine, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Professor of register epidemiology

Bio:
Fredrik Nyberg is Professor of Register Epidemiology. He is a physician with a broad experience in epidemiology from both academia and industry. He is the P.I. of the SCIFI-PEARL project and has led broad research on COVID-19 and the pandemic during the past 5 years. He is the lead of the NordForsk-funded network on Post COVID-19 Condition "PCC-Def".

Hector Bonilla

Affiliation:
Division of Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine, Department of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine; ME/CFS Clinic; Stanford Post-Acute COVID-19 Syndrome Clinic
Clinical Professor

Bio:
Due to his interest in cytokines and immunological responses, Dr. Bonilla became a researcher at ImmunoScience Inc., a biotechnology company in California that works to develop a therapeutic HIV vaccine. Dr. Bonilla’s experience of treating HIV/HCV combined with his interest in inflammatory response is the driving force behind his desire to understand ME/CFS. Dr. Bonilla is a strong patient advocate, and he believes in integrated care—care in which physicians communicate and coordinate efforts to deliver the best medical outcome for patients. His ME/CFS patients are his inspiration, and he is committed to continuing research to seek answers to their health challenges.

Markus Perola

Affiliation:
Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), Helsinki, Finland
Professor

Bio:
Professor Markus Perola is Research Professor at the National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) and a Group Leader at the Insitute of Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM). He is also a Visiting Professor at the Estonian Genome Project at the University of Tartu. Professor Perola is also a section editor for the European Journal of Human Genetics. He is a vice-chair of the coordinating ethical board of the Helsinki University hospital district and has positions of trust in the Finnish Medical Association. His publication list includes over 200 original articles. Dr Perola is also a practicing physician in Helsinki Western Emergency Hospital, Finland.
His research interest includes omical associations of diseases of public interest, genetic and other risk factors for common diseases, pathophysiology of disease and public health and disease prevention.

Anders B. Nygaard

Affiliation:
Division of Laboratory Medicine, Department of Microbiology, Oslo University Hospital
Researcher, Data Scientist

Bio:
Anders Benteson Nygaard is a researcher at Oslo University Hospital in Norway. He holds a PhD in Health Sciences and has a background in environmental microbiology and bioinformatics. His current research focuses on post-COVID-19 condition, long-term health and economic consequences of infectious diseases, and large-scale analyses using national registry and cohort data. He has published widely on COVID-19–related outcomes and previously conducted research on indoor microbiomes and microbial exposure in the built environment. He is the lead of the NordForsk-funded network Nordic Post-COVID Economic Impact Consortium (NPCEIC).

Maria Bygdell

Affiliation:
Department of Internal Medicine and Clinical Nutrition, Institute of Medicine, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Associate Professor

Bio:
Maria Bygdell is an Associate Professor in Epidemiology. Her research focuses on register-based studies on Post COVID-19 Condition and she is the co-lead of the NordForsk-funded network on Post COVID-19 Condition “PCC-Def”.

Velina Vangelova-Korpinen

Affiliation:
Outpatient Unit for Persistent Sympotm Rehabilitation, Helsinki University Hospital and University of Helsinki

Bio:
Velina Vangelova-Korpinen is a specialist in general medicine and a PhD student workin at the Helsinki University Hospital's outpatient unit for rehabilitation of persistent sympotms and doing her research on interventions for persistent sympotms and the epidemiology of post COVID-19 condition as a part of a Horizon Europe Long Covid -project.

Hanne Løvdal Gulseth

Affiliation:
Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo, Norway
Department Director

Unnur Valdimarsdottir

Affiliation:
Centre of Public Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Iceland, Iceland
Professor of Epidemiology

Bio:
In addition to professor of epidemiology and dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Iceland, Prof. Unnur also serves as guest professor at the Department of Medical
Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet. Her research lies on the boundaries of psychiatric and cancer epidemiology with the main emphasis on understanding how psychological stress influences major disease onset and development.

Michael Eriksen Benros

Affiliation:
Mental Health Services in the Capital Region of Denmark, Copenhagen Research Centre for Biological and Precision Psychiatry, Denmark
Professor

Bio:
Prof Michael E. Benros, has received numerous awards and am among the highly cited researchers. He is recognized internationally for being at the forefront of the emerging field of ImmunoPsychiatry - aiming to disentangle the role of infections, as COVID-19, and the immune system’s involvement in affecting brain health, through combining immune exposures from the nationwide Danish registers, with immunogenetic investigations, and novel research on cerebrospinal fluid and blood obtained from biobank and clinical studies. Furthermore, he is heading the Precision Psychiatry Initiative, utilizing the wealth of Danish Big Data resources analyzed with novel methods as machine learning approaches, aiming at paving the way for more precise diagnostics and new treatment targets for mental disorders.

Carina Mørch-Storstein

Affiliation:
Norsk Covidforening
Patient representative

Bio:
By day, she’s a project and change manager at Oslo Metropolitan University. In December 2021, she was struck by Covid. It turned out to be the looooong variety. In 2022, she started to support other patients through a buddy program. Then, she began volunteering for the newly established Norwegian Covid Association in 2023. She has been vice-chairman since 2024. Among other duties, she is a patient representative in the work conducted by The Norwegian Directorate of Health to establish new guidelines for treating fatigue due to conditions such as ME/CFS and Long Covid and participates in political advocacy for Long Covid patients.

Lisa Noren

Affiliation:
Svenska Covidföreningen
Patient representative, Specialist in general medicine

Bio:
Lisa Norén is a Swedish general practitioner and author of The Post Covid Lottery book series, sharing personal and patient experiences with long COVID. Before falling ill in March 2020, she was healthy and active—among other things, a marathon runner. She now lives with microvascular dysfunction affecting her heart and lungs. As an active member of the Swedish COVID Association, she speaks at webinars and public events. Lisa uses her unique dual perspective—as both doctor and patient—to raise awareness, influence healthcare policy and practice, and support improved research on long COVID.

Daniel Prieto-Alhambra

Affiliation:
Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences, University of Oxford, UK; Department of Medical Informatics, Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam, the Netherlands
Professor of Pharmaco- and Device Epidemiology

Bio:
I am an epidemiologist and academic clinician scientist using routinely collected (real world) health data to generate reliable evidence for improved patient care. I have joined the European Health Data & Evidence Network EHDEN (www.ehden.eu) and the Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics OHDSI (www.ohdsi.org) in an effort to accelerate and improve the quality of real world evidence internationally. From February 2022, I am Deputy Director for the European Medicines Agency's Data Analysis and Real World Interrogation Network (DARWIN EU) Coordination Centre, and lead the Development pillar for the generation and/or validation of analytical tools to generate real world evidence for regulatory use.

Malin Nygren-Bonnier

Affiliation:
Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden
Associate Professor

Bio:
Malin Nygren-Bonnier is a physiotherapist and associate professor with a joint position between Karolinska University Hospital and Karolinska Institutet. She leads the research group Function and Health in Respiratory and Cardiovascular Conditions, and is the principal investigator of the ReCOV project, about recovery and rehabilitation after COVID-19. She serves as Sweden’s representative in the Network of Expertise on Long COVID (NELC) and contributes as an expert in an international working group under WHO on rehabilitation of Post COVID-19 Condition (Long COVID).

Terence Stephenson

Affiliation:
Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, University College London, UK
Professor of Child Health

Bio:
Professor Sir Terence Stephenson is Chair of NHS Providers from 1st February 2025. He was knighted in the 2018 New Year Honours for services to Healthcare and Children's Health Services. He was selected as an National Institute of Health Research Senior Investigator for 4 years from April 2022. His research has mainly been in physiology of early life and acute and chronic paediatric illness. Professor Stephenson has published over 330 peer reviewed papers, commentaries and book chapters. As a researcher he has received over £15 million in funding through 50 competitively awarded grants.

Joel Selvakumar

Affiliation:
Division of Medicine and Laboratory Sciences, Institute of Clinical Medicine, University of Oslo, Norway
Doctoral Research Fellow

Bio:
Joel Selvakumar is a paediatrician and PhD candidate at the University of Oslo and Akershus University Hospital, Norway. His research focuses on the prevalence and mechanisms of the post-COVID-19 condition in children and young people, primarily through the LoTECA prospective cohort study. He is also involved in two randomised controlled trials investigating the effects of nicotinamide riboside and behavioural interventions on the post-COVID-19 condition. Alongside his research, he is an active member of the Norwegian Paediatric Association’s working group against overdiagnosis and overtreatment.

 

Nhung Trinh

Affiliation:
Department of Pharmacy, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, University of Oslo, Norway
Researcher

Bio:
My research interests include application and development of methods to analyze real-world data on safety and effectiveness of medication use with a focus on vulnerable populations (e.g., pregnant individuals and children). I am also interested in assessing the impact of drug regulations and adversity (e.g., climate change, economic downturns) on drug utilization. My works aim to support health policy making, treatment guidelines development and revision, and inform corrective actions.

Gunhild Alvik Nyborg

Affiliation:
Department of Microbiology, Oslo University, Norway
Researcher

Bio:
Her research interests include post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 infection and its impact on students’ learning, health economics, and burden of Disease.
Throughout the pandemic, she worked to collect knowledge and understanding of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and its implications, with focus on Long Covid/PACS as seen from different perspectives including pathophysiology, implications for society, treatments and resources, and for that knowledge and understanding to be disseminated.

Marta Alcalde Herraiz

Affiliation:
Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences, University of Oxford, UK
Research Assistant in Data Science and Pharmacogenomics

Bio:
Marta Alcalde Herraiz is a PhD student at the University of Oxford. Her research is focused on the use of real-world data to support healthcare regulatory decisions. Before embarking on the PhD, she worked as a Health Data Scientist research assistant, where she gained hands-on experience on designing and conducting large-scale epidemiological and genetic studies to generate real-world evidence on the use, safety, and effectiveness of pharmacological treatments.

Yiyi Xu

Affiliation:
School of Public Health and Community Medicine, Institute of Medicine, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Associate Professor

Bio:
Yiyi Xu is an Associate Professor in Occupational and Environmental Medicine. She has a strong background in public health, epidemiology, and applied statistics. Her research focuses on Covid-19 vaccination effectiveness and safety, and post Covid-19 condition, and has extensive experience in large scale register-based research.

Artur Fedorowski

Affiliation:
Department of Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden
Adjunct Professor

Bio:
Professor Fedorowski’s research is focused on cardiovascular autonomic dysfunction and various syncope mechanisms, including reflex syncope and autonomic failure. Two major forms of orthostatic intolerance: orthostatic hypotension and POTS, a source of frustration for doctors and their patients, are also the centre of scientific interest. His research area also includes genetics of cardiovascular disease and post-COVID syndrome.

Preben Aavitsland

Affiliation:
Pandemic Center, University of Bergen; Norwegian Institute of Public Health
Professor

 

Junqing Xie

Affiliation:
Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences, University of Oxford, UK
Postdoctoral Researcher

Bio:
Junqing Xie specialize in studying drugs and vaccines effects and understanding interplays between major communicable or non-communicable diseases via modern population-based research techniques.
He was a statistical programming training fellow (2018-2019) at the Oxford Big Data Institute, where he gained systematic training in developing well-organized analytic pipelines for large-scale research initiatives.

Lill Trogstad

Affiliation:
Norwegian Institute of Public Health
Section Director

Bio:
Lill Trogstad is Head of Section for vaccine epidemiology and population-based studies at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. She received her MD from the University of Oslo, Norway in 1993 and a PhD in epidemiology in 2009. She has a clinical background in obstetrics and gynecology and is an ADVAC trained expert of vaccinology. Her main research focus is vaccine epidemiology. She currently leads several research projects studying safety and effectiveness of both pandemic and routine vaccines, as well as long term consequences of infection using large population-based cohorts and national registries.

Karin Magnusson

Affiliation:
Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo, Norway; Lund University, Sweden
Researcher

Bio:
Karin Magnusson is a researcher at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and Lund University. She has several years of experience utilizing Nordic registry-based data in research on infectious and non-communicable diseases. She has led multiple studies on post-COVID in the Emergency Preparedness Register for COVID-19 and has played a key role in establishing a knowledge base to support sustainable healthcare services during the pandemic.

 

Mary Barker

Affiliation:
Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden
Postdoctoral Researcher

Bio:
Mary Barker is a postdoctoral researcher in the Unit of Integrative Epidemiology. Her current research focuses on associations between mental illness and infectious disease (e.g. COVID-19, HPV). She has been conducting psychiatric epidemiological research using electronic healthcare data since the start of her PhD, during which she researched anxiety and depression among children and young people with life-limiting conditions. Her first postdoctoral research position at the University of Leicester, UK, focused on young-onset type 2 diabetes and it's association with psychiatric and physical morbidity and mortality.

Hanna Ollila

Affiliation:
Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland, FIMM, HiLIFE, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
Senior researcher

Bio: 
Hanna M Ollila is a FIMM-EMBL Group Leader at the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM), University of Helsinki. Her research integrates genetic epidemiology, immunology, and systems biology to uncover mechanisms of infections and infection-triggered conditions, including Long COVID and ME/CFS. Ollila’s team leads international collaborative efforts such as the Long COVID Host Genetics Initiative and the GEM (Genetics and Epidemiology of ME/CFS) consortium to understand mechanisms of immune, infectious and post-infectious diseases.

Thor Aspelund

Affiliation:
Centre of Public Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, School of Health Sciences, University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland
Professor

Bio: 
Thor Aspelund is a professor of biostatistics. He leads the modeling team at the University of Iceland to evaluate and predict the development of COVID-19 in Iceland, and is a member of the research team behind the COVID-19 National Resilience Cohort, a study conducted by the University of Iceland, the Directorate of Health and the Chief Epidemiologist, with the aim of increasing knowledge about the epidemic’s effects on the well-being and lifestyle of Icelanders. He has been involved in risk modeling for Iceland such as coronary and cardiovascular risk, atrial fibrillation, risk of fracture, and risk of diabetic retinopathy.