About us - NordicRWE

Christian Jonasson

MSc. Pharm. Ph.D. Research Director

Christian Jonasson has over 25 years of relevant experience from public sector, academia and pharmaceutical industry. For more than a decade he has dedicated his work to health data utilization and RWD/E research using Norwegian and Nordic health data. This includes working as a Chief Scientific Officer in a biobank company, as a senior researcher in epidemiology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), and lately as a Specialist Director Health Data at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. Christian is a co-affiliated senior researcher at the K.G. Jebsen center for genetic epidemiology at NTNU.

Steinar Thoresen

MD, Ph.D. Medical Director

Steinar is a MD and pathologist by training with a PhD in breast-cancer. He has worked for more than 20 years at the Cancer Registry of Norway, also including a position as Director of The National Cancer Screening Programme. At the same time he held a position as professor ll at University of Bergen (1999-2012) and did cancer pathology diagnostic in a private lab (1984-2006). He has been visiting professor at Harvard Medical School (1990-91) and published 130 international papers on cancer epidemiology applying a range of different RWD sources in the Nordic countries. Since 2006 he has held national and international leadership R&D positions in the pharma industry.

Kristian Svendsen

MSc. Pharm. Ph.D. Pharmacoepidemiologist

Kristian is a co-affiliated associate professor at the Department of Pharmacy at the UiT – The Artic University of Norway. His research focus is centered on drug utilization patterns and drug effectiveness and safety studies across a range of different TAs (e.g. opioids and antibacterials). In ongoing projects, he explores network-based algorithms and machine learning methodology in RWD/E. He has expertise in pharmacovigilance and has experience from the European Medicines Agency working with adverse drug reaction reports.

Simon Boge Brant

MSc Statistician

Simon is a statistician who holds a master’s degree in statistics from the University of Oslo and is currently finishing a PhD degree at the University of Oslo. As a PhD candidate, Simon has been affiliated with the BigInsight center for research-based innovation, and his doctoral research project is a part of BigInsight’s “Personalised fraud detection” innovation objective

Elin Ngo

MSc.Pharm. Ph.D. Project Manager

Elin is a pharmacist with a PhD in social and clinical pharmacy from the University of Oslo. Her research was focused on nausea and vomiting during pregnancy, more specific, intervention studies and drug utilization among pregnant women. She also has experience in developing mobile applications used in managing nausea and vomiting during pregnancy and for data collection.

Laxmi Bhatta

MPH. Ph.D. Epidemiologist

Laxmi is an epidemiologist with master in public health, PhD in respiratory epidemiology and postdoc in genetic epidemiology. He is a co-affiliated researcher at the Department of Public Health and Nursing, NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology. His working areas is chronic disease epidemiology including respiratory epidemiology. He has expertise in cross-cutting research approaches including mendelian randomization, genome-wide association analysis, gene-environment interaction analysis, and risk prediction.

Board of directors

Ketil Widerberg

Chairman of the board

Ketil Widerberg leads Oslo Cancer Cluster, a cancer innovation member organization, and OCC Incubator, a leading European life science incubator. Previously Ketil has over a decade of experience in biotech and software business development. He holds an MBA from the University of Cambridge and was a member of the NHO forum for health and industry 2017 and a member of the health data expert committee from the Ministry of health 2017.

Arnoldo Frigessi di Rattalma

Board Member

Professor at the Department of Biostatistics and (until September 2023) director of the Oslo Centre for Biostatistics and Epidemiology (OCBE) with the Institute of Basic Medical Research at the University of Oslo and the Oslo University Hospital. Frigessi leads the centre of excellence Integreat –The Norwegian centre for knowledge-driven machine learning, funded by the Norwegian research council from 2023 until 2033. He has lead the centre for research based innovation BigInsight. His research focuses on Bayesian statistics, on both the methodological and applied side, on infectious disease modelling (where he played an important role in the management of Covid in Norway), and on mathematical models for personalized cancer treatment. He has supervised more than 40 PhD students, published more than 150 peer reviewed papers and is a elected member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

Lena Nymo Helli

Board Member

Lena is a pharmacist with more than 25 years experience from international pharmaceutical industry. She is currently CEO of Norway Health Tech, and has worked in many phases of the product life cycle from R&D to sales and marketing. She has had roles as medical director, commercial director and also recently General Manager in Norway. Lena holds a Master of Science in Pharmacy from the University of Oslo, Norway and Christian-Albrechts University in Kiel, Germany, as well as Business Economy from the Norwegian Business School (BI).

Steinar Thoresen

Board Member

Steinar Thoresen is a trained pathologist with a PhD on breast cancer and long-time experience in cancer epidemiology. He worked for more than 20 years at The Cancer Registry of Norway, also as Director for The National Cancer Screening-Program. At the same time he did diagnostic pathology in the period 1985-2006. He has published more than 100 international papers on cancer-epidemiology and was associated professor at The University of Bergen for 15 years (Cancer Pathology). Steinar spent one year at Harvard Medical School and worked at Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. Steinar has also extensive experience from the pharma-industry since 2006, being Medical Director both in Abbvie and GSK. Since 2019 he has been Strategy Director for The Nordics and The Baltics for Merck AB.

Christian Jonasson

Board Member

Christian brings over 25 years of diverse experience from R&D roles in pharma, in academia and from the governmental sector. For over a decade, his sole focus has been on epidemiology and health data, also being the Chief Scientific Officer in a Norwegian biobank company. Christian has extensive knowledge and insight of the Nordic health data and biobank research infrastructures. He is a co-affiliated Senior Researcher at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) with active research in the field of pharmaco- and molecular epidemiology. Christian join NordicRWE from the position as Specialist Director Health Data at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. Christian holds a Master of Science in Pharmacy from Uppsala University and a Ph.D. from the University of Bergen.

Aase Gundersen

Board Member

Aase is a lawyer with more than 25 years experience from major law firms and consultancies. A former partner and head of IP of law firm BAHR as well as Special Counsel at SANDS law firm, she currently owns and operates the consultancy firm Vedere AS. Aase has followed the life science sector since the 1990’ies. She has worked extensively with global pharmaceutical companies as well as R&D based Norwegian companies and start-ups, and has served on the board of a number of life science companies. Her expertise includes regulatory law, IP and contracts. Aase holds a Master of law from Oslo University.

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The Team

Christian Jonasson

Steinar Thoresen

Kristian Svendsen

Simon Boge Brant

Elin Ngo

Laxmi Bhatta

Board of directors

Ketil Widerberg

Arnoldo Frigessi di Rattalma

Lena Nymo Helli

Steinar Thoresen

Christian Jonasson

Aase Gundersen