Mads Melbye

Mads Melbye earned his M.D. degree from University of Aarhus, Denmark, in 1983, and a DMSc degree from the same university in 1988. His thesis work was partly done as a fellow in the epidemiology program (1985–1986) at the National Cancer Institute, NIH, US.

After clinical training Melbye became senior investigator in 1989 at the Danish Cancer Registry in Copenhagen, and in 1991 state epidemiologist at Statens Serum Institut (SSI) in Copenhagen.

In 1992, Melbye was given a personal chair in infectious disease and cancer epidemiology by the Danish minister for research and education. He founded the Department of Epidemiology Research at SSI.

From 1998 to 2008 he was foreign adjunct professor at Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics Branch at Karolinska University in Stockholm. In 2012 he established the Danish National Biobank, which is one of the biggest biobanks in the world. In the same year he became senior vice-president at Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen, and from 2016 until 2020 he was president and CEO.

He is presently professor of medical epidemiology at University of Copenhagen and affiliated with Department of Genetics at Stanford University School of Medicine. He is also director of the Cancer Institute in Denmark (DCRC).