Nils-Goran Larsson is a professor in mitochondrial genetics at the Department of Laboratory Medicine at Karolinska Institute, Stockholm Sweden. He is also a pediatrician and a senior consultant at the Center for Inherited Metabolic Diseases at the Karolinska university hospital. Dr. Larsson got his MD from Gothenburg University in 1984 and his PhD in the field of mitochondrial genetics in 1992. He also received his board certification (license to practice medicine) in 1992. Between the years 1994-1997, Dr. Larsson completed a HHMI physician postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University, USA, after which he returned to Sweden to start his own research group at Karolinska Institute. During his time as an independent researcher, Dr. Larsson has reached international acclaim for his work, and has become one of the leading scientists within the field of mitochondrial genetics. In 2002 he received the Goran Gustafsson Price in Medicine, awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and he was one of four members of the project that received the 2004 Descartes Prize for Outstanding Scientific and Technological Achievements Resulting from European Collaborative Research. Dr. Larsson is a member of the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute, and one of the current members of the Nobel Committee for Medicine or Physiology. In 2006 he was elected as a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, in the class for Medical Sciences.