SciLifeLab and RIKEN sign agreement to strengthen research collaboration
SciLifeLab and RIKEN, Sweden’s national center for advanced life science research and infrastructure and Japan’s largest comprehensive research institution, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to strengthen scientific collaboration between Sweden and Japan. The agreement builds on more than a decade of successful cooperation and opens new opportunities for joint research, knowledge exchange and researcher and technology experts mobility in life sciences.
The agreement was signed on 5 November 2026 by SciLifeLab Director Jan Ellenberg and RIKEN Executive Vice President Kyoko Nozaki during a ceremony in Stockholm.
The aim of the Memorandum of Understanding is to facilitate researcher and infrastructure staff exchanges, joint events, joint training programs, research data and AI model sharing, and creating new opportunities for collaborative research projects.
Kyoko Nozaki, is professor at the University of Tokyo and RIKEN’s Executive Vice President since last year. Dr Nozaki reflected on the importance of possibilities to share knowledge, data and engage in international collaborations.
“Scientific breakthroughs increasingly depend on cross-border synergy and shared expertise. By formalizing and expanding our partnership with SciLifeLab, we are opening new avenues for researchers – especially the next generation – to seamlessly exchange knowledge, collaborate across disciplines, and leverage shared data to tackle fundamental challenges in the life sciences” said Kyoko Nozaki.
Building on a decade of collaboration
The agreement marks a new chapter in a long-standing relationship between RIKEN, Karolinska Institutet (KI) and SciLifeLab. Since 2014, the organizations have organized joint scientific symposia, alternating between Sweden and Japan, to share research findings and explore common scientific interests.
This year’s symposium, Living systems across scales, hosted at SciLifeLab on November 4, brought together researchers from across several RIKEN centers in Japan, and several SciLifeLab partner universities including Karolinska Institutet and the Royal Institute of Technology, to share findings and discuss opportunities for collaboration focusing on how the function of complex biological systems can be understood by integration of spatial and temporal scales.
Over the years, these exchanges have strengthened ties between research groups and contributed to knowledge transfer and international experience for early-career researchers.
The new agreement broadens the scope of this partnership to SciLifeLab as a whole, with its seven sites and 11 partner universities in Sweden, allowing more research environments across Sweden to participate. SciLifeLab’s Director Professor Jan Ellenberg reflected on the transformation of molecular life science of today.
“We are at a turning point in the life sciences. Advances in multi-omic molecular analysis combined with imaging are giving us a comprehensive molecular of living systems. Data-driven approaches and AI are rapidly accelerating how we can extract knowledge and change the scope of the questions we can answer. By bringing the technology and data-driven advances together, we can begin to predict how living systems function and test those predictions experimentally. The agreement signed today gives researchers and technology experts in two leading science nations, Sweden and Japan, more opportunities to do that work together, drawing on the complementary strengths of their national organizations SciLifeLab and RIKEN. Working together in close collaboration in the spirit of open science, open data and open AI models is the only way forward towards a new level of knowledge about life” Jan Ellenberg commented after the signing ceremony.
Exploring new opportunities in life sciences
The signing follows a SciLifeLab delegation visit to Japan in October 2025 and 2026, during which representatives met with RIKEN researchers and leadership to discuss their national life science agendas and areas such as advanced imaging, spatial omics, technology development, data standards, AI-driven modelling and the SciLifeLab flagship program Alpha Cell.
These areas highlight how the organizations can bring their complementary scientific expertise and technological capabilities even closer together.
The five-year agreement provides a framework and institutional commitment to explore these areas of collaboration, formulate specific joint future projects and activities and jointly work towards identifying funding opportunities for them.
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