Prof. Ingileif Jonsdottir

Prof. Ingileif Jonsdottir Fil.Dr. is the Head of Infectious and Inflammatory Diseases at deCODE genetics, Reykjavik, Iceland, a global leader in human genetics, where she leads projects on genetics infectious diseases like tuberculosis, severe influenza, invasive pneumococcal and meningococcal diseases as well as on immune responses to influenza and smallpox vaccination. She is also involved in genetics of autoimmune and other inflammatory diseases.

Prof. Jonsdottir has a Fil.Dr. degree in immunology from the University of Stockholm, Sweden. She is also a professor of immunology at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Iceland and heads the Vaccine research unit at the Department of Immunology at Landspitali, the National University Hospital of Iceland, supervising several Ph.D. and M.Sc. students. Her research is focused on neonatal immunology, vaccine responses and vaccination strategies and she has been the principal investigator on several clinical trials on conjugate vaccines.

Prof. Jonsdottir has contributed to over 70 original publications in the fields of immunology, vaccine responses and human genetics, and authored several reports on research and ethics in a Nordic context. She has served on various Boards related to science, including the Science Committee of the University of Iceland (1999-2002), the Quality Assurance Committee of the University of Iceland (2007-11), the Icelandic Research and Policy Council (2003-9), the Scientific Advisory Board of European Vaccine Initiative (from 2011). She was the Chair of the National Bioethics Committee in Iceland (1999-2002) and Member of the Nordic Committee on Bioethics (2002-2009, Chair in 2005), and Delegate for Iceland in EU FP Programme Committees (FP4: Biotechnology, FP5:Quality of Life, FP6: Genomic and Biotechnology, 1999-2007).