Professor in Medical Sciences
Björn gained his degree in physiotherapy from Karolinska Institutet (KI) in 2000, and then worked as a university lecturer both at KI and clinically at an outpatient clinic. He defended his PhD thesis in medical science in 2007 and became a Senior Lecturer at KI in 2009. In 2011, Björn took a post as a postdoctoral researcher in Washington DC (US Navy), and in 2012 he became an Associate Professor at KI. Björn was awarded with scientific award and research funding and he built up a research group at KI that focuses on pain and pain rehabilitation. In 2015, Björn moved to Falun to take a position as acting Head of the Centre for Clinical Research - Dalarna (CKF-Dalarna). From 2016 to June 2020, Björn has held a position as Senior University Lecturer at Dalarna University (DU), with a continued role as a senior researcher and scientific advisor at Region Dalarna. From June 2020, he is Professor in Medical Science at DU and head of the Department of Research and Higher Education at Region Dalarna. Björn is still Director for The Research Centre for Public Health and Sports (RePS) at DU, and leads several externally funded research projects, supervises doctoral candidates and postdocs, and is an expert reviewer in several research councils. Björn has a teaching expertise in exercise therapy and biomechanics.
Examiner assignments, as well as occasional lectures.
SCIENTIFIC ACTIVITY – a short overview
My scientific portfolio reflects research-related experience that I have gained during the years I spent as a researcher at Karolinska Institutet, and in recent years at Dalarna University, including the year I was the acting head of the Center for Clinical Research in the Region Dalarna. I presently (since 1 June 2020) hold the positions of Head of the department of Research and Higher Education at Region Dalarna and is Professor in Medical Science at Dalarna University (on leave), and Associate Professor (2012) at Karolinska Institutet (affiliated).
My research concerns interventional advances devoted to improving pain prevention and patient management in the field of musculoskeletal pain and pain rehabilitation. This includes leading several projects that develop, validate and evaluate interventional methods/protocols tailored for clinical and preventive work. Several of these projects concern randomized controlled trials, conducted empirically in clinical settings, or in advanced laboratory settings. The development of clinical tests and large-scale epidemiological register-based studies are also included, with the focus on health improvement and workability. I supervise involved doctoral candidates and postdocs in basically all these project areas.
Since 2018, I have been the Director of The Research Centre for Public Health and Sports (RePS) at Dalarna University. RePS serves as a platform for doctoral candidates, senior and junior researchers, practitioners, regulators, and policy makers to share and discuss insights related to their research activity/education. I am currently/have been primarily active in three main translational research programs where I am responsible for ongoing externally funded projects: one that incorporates registry- and laboratory-based research on chronic pain conditions with focus on the specialist care sector (funded by VR/The Swedish Research Council and Forte/The Swedish Research Council for Health, Working life and Welfare) – latest thesis by Elena Tseli (Aug 2019) and by Riccardo Lo Martire (Jan 2022). A second concerns empirical data on occupational health, with focus on the military community (founded by AFA and the Swedish Armed Forces (see thesis by Andreas Monnier (Nov 2016), and a third focusing on sports-related disorders (founded by e.g. CIF/The Swedish Research Council for Sport Science). In recent years, I have formed operational research groups working on defined projects in these programs, the most comprehensive program being our pain research group which is now headed by asociated professor Linda Vixner.
