Tove Fall

Professor in Molecular Epidemiology. Please go to the homepage for my research group.

My graduate education is in Veterinary Medicine from SLU, Uppsala (2005). After a PhD on the epidemiology of diabetes in dogs (2009) and a transition to human medical and genetic epidemiology in my post-doc at Karoinska Insitutet, I qualified as Associate Professor in Epidemiology at Uppsala University in 2013, Sweden and started my own research group in 2016. The focus of my research is to identify risk factors and causes for diabetes and cardiovascular disease onset and progression. . So far, my group has taken part in the development and application of bioinformatics analysis pipelines for metabolomics and proteomics data in large population-based studies, which I anticipate will have large impacts on the field of epidemiology. I have also led work on the use of Mendelian Randomization methods in the context of circulating lipids, an article which was accompanied by an Editorial in the journal Diabetes. I have organized the linkage of several large national registers and have now access to two databases, one on 4.5 million adults, and the other one comprising one million children, with detailed information on health and exposure to animals. The latter has been used for assessing the long-standing question regarding an association of early exposure to animals and childhood asthma, a study which not only gained huge media interest including interviews for BBC World and title story in The Times in 2015, but is also used as part of the scientific basis for new policies on pediatrician advice to parents about pet ownership in Sweden. My scientific accomplishments were awarded in 2015 with the Oscar prize at Uppsala University (all disciplines), the Göran Gustafssons grand prize for young researchers in 2016, the Thureus prize in 2021 and the Leif Groop award in 2023. As detailed in my list of research grants, I have been awarded project grants as Principal Investigator from Vetenskapsrådet, FORMAS, Diabetesfonden and Hjärt-Lungfonden, among others. I have both initiated and participated in many collaborative efforts. Some of these were large international scientific collaborations including up to 150 study groups that I participated in first as a contributor and later as part of the steering committees. I am often invited to give lectures to lay audiences and the general public and I have written a book for children together with colleagues in the Swedish Young Academy ("Forskardrömmar") In 2017, I was selected for a position as Assistant Senior Lecturer (Tenure Track). In 2018, I was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2018 and to Professor in 2019. In 2018, I was also awarded a prestigious Starting Grant from the European Reserach Council to study links between the gut microbiota and vascular health. During the pandemic 2020-2023, I wanted to contribute to society by using my knowledge and time to contribute to the Covid Symptom Study Sweden (covid19app.lu.se) in collaboration with Lund University and in the CRUSH-Covid project in collaboration with Region Uppsala. My overall long-term goal is to establish a world-class scientific environment at my University within the molecular epidemiology field to attract international and diverse talents in the field to achieve important scientific findings that can translate to improvements for the patients and the wider community.

For current research projects, please see tovefall.se