Hans-Olov Adami - Biography#

Dr. Adami graduated in medicine from the University of Uppsala in 1969, became a board licensed surgeon in 1974 and obtained his PhD degree based on an epidemiologic study in 1978. In 1979 he was promoted to Associate Professor of Surgery. In 1986 he was appointed to a full-time senior research position in cancer epidemiology. And in 1990 he was appointed by the Swedish Government to a tenured national chair in cancer epidemiology. He initially built a cancer epidemiology department at Uppsala University but moved to Karolinska Institutet (KI) in 1997. Subsequently, this department, founded by dr. Adami, has become one of the most prominent at KI with currently almost three hundred employees and a publication record of over 500 papers per year. Dr. Adami chaired the department at Karolinska Institutet for about 10 years. Shortly after his decision to step down, he was recruited to chair the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health after having been affiliated with Harvard University as adjunct professor since 1992. In 2012, he declined reappointment at Harvard, moved back to Sweden and has since then been actively associated with the Clinical Effectiveness Research Group at the University of Oslo.

Over the years, dr. Adami has undertaken large, often nationwide epidemiologic studies of numerous cancer sites and types; the majority of these studies have been funded through RO1s from the National Institutes of Health in the US with Adami as PI. He has also initiated numerous large cohort studies and randomized clinical trials. Although these studies have been undertaken in Scandinavia, his most recent large case-control study, funded by the NIH, was carried out in southern China focusing on the etiology of nasopharyngeal carcinoma.

Currently, dr. Adami continues his active work at the University of Oslo. But he also continues numerous collaborations with colleagues at KI, many of them based on studies that he initiated during earlier years.