Prof. Karsten Kristiansen

PhD

Denmark

Karsten Kristiansen is Professor of Molecular Biology and heads the Laboratory of Genomics and Molecular Biomedicine at the Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen.

He is also Professor at and Director of the Institute of Metagenomics at BGI-Shenzhen. After graduation from the University of Copenhagen, he held postdoctoral positions at the Max-Planck-Institut für Molekulare Genetik in Berlin and at the Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique, Fondation Edmond de Rothschild, in Paris. He was full professor and head of Department of Molecular Biology, later Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Southern Denmark, 1992-2005, before he was recruited as professor and Head of the Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen in 2008.

 

Central themes of the research of Professor Kristiansen concern the interaction between the host genome, the host immune system and the gut microbiota in regulating energy metabolism, and how interaction between different nutrients modulates energy homeostasis and adipocyte differentiation and function. In addition, his research groups now explore the interaction between the brain and the gut microbiota. For these projects his research groups use a combination of molecular biology approaches, animal studies, metagenomics and genomics. He has published more than 300 articles in refereed journals, many of which in high ranking journals such as Science, Nature, and Cell.