Johan Gunnar Eriksson
A*STAR Institute for Human Development and Potential, Singapore
Professor Johan Eriksson is the Executive Director and Programme Director for Human Development at A*STAR IHDP, and Director of the Human Potential Translational Research Programme at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. He is also the principal investigator of the Singaporean birth cohort studies GUSTO and S-PRESTO, as well as the iAdoRe study. A specialist in internal medicine and general practice, Professor Eriksson was last full professor at the faculty of medicine, University of Helsinki, and chief physician at Helsinki University Central Hospital in Finland. He holds clinical interests in diabetes and related metabolic diseases.
His research focuses on the early programming of health and disease, as well as on the prevention of type 2 diabetes and related metabolic outcomes by lifestyle interventions. He oversees the Helsinki Birth Cohort Study, a unique birth cohort study with a follow-up of over 20,000 individuals from birth until the age of over 80 years. Furthermore, he has been involved in the gestational diabetes prevention study RADIEL, in which a lifestyle intervention was shown to successfully reduce gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM); and the Finnish Diabetes Prevention Study (DPS) – the first randomised study to show that lifestyle intervention is effective in the prevention of type 2 diabetes.
Professor Eriksson received his medical degree and specialist qualifications from the University of Helsinki.
