Welcome to the DDLS program!
We look forward to engaging you and your group in different community activities and in the overall SciLifeLab mission. On this site, you can find information about DDLS, SciLifeLab and the DDLS Fellows program.
About DDLS
The SciLifeLab and Wallenberg National Program for Data-Driven Life Science (DDLS) is a 12-year initiative funded with a total of 3.3 billion SEK (about 300 MEuro, 330 MUSD) from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.
The purpose of the program is to recruit and train the next generation of data-driven life scientists and to create globally leading computational and data science capabilities in Swedish life science. Furthermore, the program aims to strengthen collaborations between universities, bridge the research communities of life sciences and data sciences, and create partnerships with industry, healthcare and other national and international actors.
The Fellows program
As a DDLS fellow, you will be employed by one of the participating organizations, with a specific department having the main responsibility for your employment and your academic career development. This will provide a strong local research environment. Additionally, you will be part of the national DDLS program, cultivating a strong, interdisciplinary community of researchers working with the rapidly expanding resources and needs of open data in life sciences.
You will also be part of the Program for Academic Leaders in Life Science (PALS) — a dynamic collaboration that brings together the excellent junior PIs from the DDLS, SciLifeLab, and WCMM Fellow programs. PALS aims to foster meaningful scientific connections across diverse disciplines, including curiosity-driven, technology-driven, and data-driven research, as well as translational and clinical science.
STRATEGIC RESEARCH AREAS
The DDLS program focus on four strategic areas of data-driven research,
read more and find out who your research area lead is.
• Cell and molecular biology
• Evolution and biodiversity
• Precision medicine and diagnostics
• Epidemiology and biology of infection


Visual identity, Affiliation and acknowledgement
All DDLS fellows are expected to include SciLifeLab as part of their primary affiliation (e.g. Department, SciLifeLab, University), and must include the following sentence: “This work was supported by the SciLifeLab & Wallenberg Data Driven Life Science Program (grant: KAW 2020.0239)”, as an acknowledgment in all publications, research and educational presentations, popular science appearances and press releases.
When presenting your DDLS research it’s also important that you follow our graphical guidelines and use the correct visual identity. You can find logotypes, templates and guidelines by following the link below.

Briefly about SciLifeLab
SciLifeLab is a national resource of unique technologies and expertise available to life scientists, closely intertwined with our community of researchers in areas such as biomedicine, ecology and evolution. We bring scientists together across traditional boundaries and foster collaborations with industry, health care, public research organizations and international partners.
The overall mission for SciLifeLab is to enable life science research in Sweden that is beyond what is possible for an individual researcher, an individual university, or an individual research discipline.
National funding makes SciLifeLab’s services and expertise available to researchers in all of Sweden. Information about the technologies and services that are available can be found at https://www.scilifelab.se/services.
Bioinformatics support
As a part of the SciLifeLab services and the DDLS program, the bioinformatics platform at SciLifeLab (NBIS) provides state-of-the-art bioinformatics support to Swedish life science researchers, and is also working closely with the Data Centre to maximize value and impact of the data generated at SciLifeLab and elsewhere.
NBIS is a distributed national research infrastructure, and the Swedish contact point to the European infrastructure for biological information ELIXIR.
Data Centre and Data support
The Data Centre (DC) is a support function at SciLifeLab with responsibility for services, resources and support for IT and data-related issues. It serves the infrastructure platforms, but also operations and management, research programs and strategic initiatives, and represents SciLifeLab in national and international collaborations for issues regarding data and IT. As data-driven research has become central to SciLifeLab’s future, including the launch of the DDLS research program, DC is an important part of the SciLifeLab organization. For questions regarding IT and data management contact datacentre@scilifelab.se.
Brief interview
As a newly recruited DDLS Fellow, we would like to highlight your profile and research focus through our news channels (web, newsletter and social channels). Please take a few minutes to answer the questions, sent to you in a separate mail from our communications team, and we will publish a brief news piece (question/answer type of interview).
If you have not received this mail within the first two weeks of your employment, please contact news@scilifelab.se.
Training and Research school
SciLifeLab is a major training hub in Sweden and arranges over 170 courses per year, and trains over 4,000 persons yearly from all major universities (and elsewhere in society).
Training within the DDLS-program will be set up as a part of the SciLifeLab Training Hub. As a DDLS fellow, you will be part of the training community with the possibility both to educate others and also to be educated yourself.
The DDLS research school will be open to your DDLS funded PhD students.
External Relations
SciLifeLab is a national resource for molecular biosciences. As such, collaboration is at the heart of our operations. To facilitate collaboration with and access to our infrastructure and research community, SciLifeLab has its own External Relations Office (ERO).
As a DDLS fellow, ERO can help you facilitate interactions with relevant partners, both internal and external, with the purpose of discussing both research collaboration, innovation and knowledge exchange. We can also guide you through the innovation landscape whenever you have an idea you would like to develop further.
Your page on the web
We would like to present you and your group’s research on our website.
We therefore encourage that you submit the following information at your earliest convenience:
• Research Interest – a few paragraphs on your current research
• Group Members – A list of names of your group members
• Selected Key publications (up to 6 publications)
• Lab website URL (if applicable)
• High Resolution Profile Picture (Free to use without copyright).
Events, Activities and Meetings
The DDLS program will organize a large number of events, such as the DDLS annual conference and Research Areas specific symposia.
There is always a lot going on at SciLifeLab. Please visit our event page for news and upcoming events (posted under Calendar). If you do not already subscribe to our weekly newsletter, please sign up here.
SciLifeLab also provides workshops and training opportunities within our technology areas. You can find more information here.
SciLifeLab is regularly organizing activities to support our Fellows. These activities also aim to promote research collaborations, to building a strong Fellows community, and support career development.
Moreover, we encourage the Fellows to give ideas of new activities to be organized centrally, but also to engage and organize events yourselves.
SciLifeLab offers all DDLS Fellows to advertise vacancies in their group on the SciLifeLab career page. To post a job, send the link to the vacant position at your host university recruitment page to ddls@scilifelab.se.
Contacts
DDLS support team: Email: ddls@scilifelab.se