Project Group

Project Management
Lars Alfredsson Lars Alfredsson and Lars Klareskog together make up the management team for the EIRA project. Lars was appointed professor in 2002 at the Department of Environmental Medicine at Karolinska Institutet. His main area of interest is diseases which affect the motor functions of the body. He is involved in several research projects within this area.	Lars Klareskog Lars Klareskog has worked as a professor in rheumatology at the Department of Medicine at Karolinska Institutet since 1993. He is the main supervisor of the genetic analysis and material which is collected through blood samples in EIRA. Lars is also the project coordinator for Combine, a unique project which combines research from several chronic inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis.
Project Coordinators
Caroline Öfverberg Colliander Project manager for EIRA. At the moment she coordinates a digitalisation of the EIRA-project. Furthermore she supports the secretariat concerning GDPR and communication.	Lena Nise Lena is the heart of the EIRA administration. Apart from data collection, Lena also works continuously with basic statistical analyses which enables the research on the EIRA material to run smoothly.
Ida Palmqvist Responsible for EIRA follow-up. Works with the quality control of incoming questionnaires. Ida also supports the secretariat concerning nutrition issues.

Project Partner
Eva Larsson A project partner is a person who has personal experience of living with a chronic disease. Eva has been involved in the development of the follow-up studies. She provides advice and support in issues concerning patient contact.
PhD-Students
Liselotte Tidblad MD and PhD-student in epidemiology at IMM. Investigates how comorbidities and obesity in early RA patients affect the choice of treatment and treatment response.	Louise Hedenstierna Louise is an MD, specialised in rheumatology and internal medicine. She is also a PhD-student in epidemiology at IMM. Her project has a clinical approach with focus on improving the knowledge about how individual factors influence clinical outcome in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). The project is aiming to better understanding about how we can individualize the treatment at an early stage.

Laboratory Technicians
Julia Norkko Biomedical Scientist. Works with the registration and processing of the blood samples in the EIRA-project. Biomedical Scientist. Works with the registration and processing of the blood samples in the EIRA-project.	Susana Hernandez Machado Biomedical Scientist. Works with the registration and processing of the blood samples in the EIRA-project. Biomedical Scientist. Works with the registration and processing of the blood samples in the EIRA-project.
Gloria Rosvall Biomedical Scientist. Works with the registration and processing of the blood samples in the EIRA-project.	Lena Israelsson
Researchers Anna Ilar Post doc in epidemiology at IMM. Investigates if different airborne exposures during worklife, like inhaling diesel exhaust, may affect the risk of getting RA.	Helga Westerlind Post doc at IMM. Helgas research focuses on factors influencing the progression of RA. Part of her work is investigating how modifiable lifestyle factors are associated with how the disease develops. Another part is identification of groups of patients with similar disease outcomes and specific risk factors for these groups.
Saedis Saevarsdóttir	Leonid Padyukov Responsible for all genetic studies within EIRA.
Boel Brynedal Research assistent at IMM. Boel is studying genetic, serologic, clinical and functional data to better understand RA and treatment response in RA patients.	Xia Jiang Xia is a Post-Doc at Harvard University, affiliated to IMM. She is studying the association between genes and the risk of developing RA.
Marie Holmqvist Marie is an MD and a Post-Doc affiliated to IMM. Her main research focus is on RA patients who also suffer from cardiovascular diseases. She aims to identify why RA patients, to such a great extent compared to the general population, suffer from cardiovascular diseases.