In January this year, Dr Niklas Blomberg joined the IHI as Executive Director. He brings to the role extensive experience in both research and leadership in life sciences: 

In his 14 years as research scientist at AstraZeneca, Sweden, Niklas led the data‑driven drug discovery team in both respiratory and inflammation. He was also industry co-lead of Open PHACTS, a project funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), the forerunner to IHI. 

In 2013, he joined the fledgling research infrastructure ELIXIR. As its founding director, he oversaw the final negotiations between member states to formally establish and launch ELIXIR. Under his leadership, the organisation grew to include 23 member states, and secured funding from both the member states and an extensive portfolio of EU-funded projects, including projects from IMI2, the European Open Science Cloud and the European Genomic Data Infrastructure. 

Besides this, Niklas holds a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from the University of Gothenburg, and a PhD in Structural Biology and Bioinformatics from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Germany.