Prof. Tomas Olsson received his MD from University of Linköping, Sweden in 1977 and went on to complete his PhD in Medical Sciences in 1980. He obtained Specialist exam in Clinical Neurology in 1984 He was appointed as Professor of Molecular Medicine 1995, and holds the post of Professor in Neurology at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden since 2008.
Prof. Olsson is member of the Nobel Assembly, and its Chairman 2017. He was Chairman for the Swedish expert committee for Multiple Sclerosis (1997-2002) and is now a member and co-founder of the Swedish Multiple Sclerosis Society as well as a member of multiple international MS societies. Prof. Olsson is a board member and co-founder of the European school of Neuroimmunology (ESNI), member of the international scientific board of the international congress of Neuroimmunology (ISNI), former executive board member of the international scientific board of the European committee for the treatment of MS. (ECTRIMS) and member of the International Multiple Sclerosis Genetics Consortium (IMSGC).
Prof. Olssons’s research interests focus on neuroinflammation with focus on multiple sclerosis (MS), and its relation to genetics, immunology and life style/environmental factors. In particular he was among the first to demonstrate autoreactive T cells in MS. He has been vital for collection of very large MS case-control materials, vital for the definition of MS risk genes and their interaction with lifestyle factors such as smoking and obesity. He has (co)authored 548 papers published in peer reviewed journals, many of them in high impact journals such as New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Nature Genetics and Science Translational Medicine. In 1994 he won the Erik K Fernströms prize for Medical research, in 2012 the K/ F Johansens International Award, Copenhagen and in 2014 the Swedbank’s Science Prize.