Katarina Svanberg was born in 1944 in Falköping, Sweden, Swedish Citizen. After exam as physician in 1984 and having defended her PhD in Medical Sciences 1989 at Lund University, Sweden, she became Assoc. Professor (docent) in 1995 and Chief Consultant in Oncology in 2003. She became Adjoined Professor at Lund University in 2008. Since 2011, she is a Distinguished Professor at South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China. She has contributed in training of a large number of PhD students from home and abroad through the years.
Katarina Svanberg started her research career by studying laser light interaction with biological tissue. Her PhD thesis in Medical Science presented pre-clinical research work within experimental photodynamic therapy and tissue spectroscopy. The subsequent research activity has focused on clinical application of the pre-clinical achievements. She has been active as an invited speaker at more than 100 international scientific conferences. Her publication list includes almost 200 items. Since 1991 she is a board member of Lund University Medical Laser Centre, where she served as Director during 2000-2012 and as the Chair of the Board since 2012. She is a board member of Lund Laser Centre since 1995. She was a Director in the Board of the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE) during 2005 – 2008. During 2009-2012, she was in the Presidential Chain of this society, being its President in 2011. SPIE has more than 19000 members globally.
She has served on scientific advisory board of a number of companies and organizations. She is active in facilitating development in photonics in developing countries. She is recipient of the Royal Swedish Scientific Society Interdisciplinary Research Prize, in 1995 and recipient of the SKAPA Innovation Prize in 2004 (Sweden´s highest innovation award). She further received the Innovator Award, Society for Industrial Development, Sweden, in 2007, and in 2017 the SPIE Gold Medal, as the first woman in the 40 year history of the presentation of this highest award of the society. She was given the NIH (US National Institutes of Health) Bench-to-Bedside Pioneer Award in Biophotonics for her contribution in the fields of photodynamic therapy and spectroscopic imaging methods. This award is the highest award for lifetime achievements in biophotonics and is given for outstanding translational research, meaning that the scientific results were brought out to the society and to the patients. She is a Fellow of two scientific societies. Katarina Svanberg is co-author of over a dozen patent applications resulting in a number of granted patents. She is a co-founder and medical advisor for Spectraphos AB (bought by Xillix Inc), Spectracure AB, Lund and Gasporox AB, Lund.
