Kirsty Spalding
SERENDIPITY MOMENTS AND FOLLOWING YOUR PASSION Kirsty Spalding is originally from Perth, Australia, and never imagined that she would become a research group leader in Sweden. Now she is Assistant Professor at Karolinska Institutet and the focus of her research is the origin and turnover of adipocytes, their progenitor cells and lipid stores in lean and obese individuals. Her story is full of serendipity moments and the path that brought
her where she is today has revealed itself as it was walked. “I never had a clear career path in my head when I was about to finish my PhD. I just rolled into it. I think I ended up where I am because I love science and the nature of it, the curiosity, but I didn’t recognize it from the beginning. I love problem solving, not learning techniques.” CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
During her PhD in Neuroscience she won a scholarship to go abroad for one year and she immediately thought of going to Europe. It was again by fate that she decided to come to Karolinska Institutet – by chance she attended a lecture by Jonas Frisén and became really excited about the topic of stem cells. She and Jonas immediately clicked so she came to KI in 2001 and did a project for one year in his group before finishing her PhD in Australia. The project was extremely exciting and challenging and focused on developing a technique for carbon dating of cells based on C14 levels
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