Sigurður Ingvarsson retires after 25 years leading Keldur

Sigurður Ingvarsson is stepping down after 25 years as director of the University of Iceland’s Experimental Station in Pathology at Keldur, mbl.is reports. He will retire because of his age and turns 70 on October 14.

Sigurður first began working at Keldur in 1981. He holds a doctorate in tumour biology from Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm and graduated as a biologist from the University of Iceland in 1979. Throughout his career, he has worked on disease-related research at Keldur and Landspítali National University Hospital.

A leading research institution

The Experimental Station at Keldur leads research into animal diseases and disease prevention. Sigurður says researchers there study diseases affecting most mammal species found in Iceland, as well as many bird and fish species and molluscs.

The aim, he says, is to improve understanding of the nature of diseases and create new knowledge. Keldur also operates the only laboratory in Iceland carrying out diagnostic testing for animal diseases, making it a key institution in that field.

Research connected to avian influenza is ongoing, with the genetic material of the virus analysed at Keldur in cooperation with institutions abroad, particularly the Friedrich Loeffler Institute in Germany, according to Sigurður.

Internationally recognised discoveries

Sigurður recalls that the Experimental Station began operating in 1948. Funding from the Rockefeller Foundation in the United States helped finance new buildings and facilities, including an electron microscope, one of the first in Europe at the time, and a centrifuge.

He says the station became known worldwide for discoveries by Björn Sigurðsson, its first director, and his colleagues concerning maedi and visna. Björn was the first to describe a slow-progressing infectious disease and cultivate the world’s first lentivirus. HIV is also a lentivirus, Sigurður says, and comparative research into the maedi and visna viruses and HIV has continued at Keldur.

Research into scrapie is another area of work at Keldur. Sigurður highlights a genotype discovered in Iceland about four years ago that researchers are working to breed into the Icelandic sheep population. They are also conducting laboratory research with international partners into how different genotypes behave when exposed to infection.

Rapid technological progress

Sigurður says research technology has advanced considerably during his career. When he began, the genomes of only a few viruses had been sequenced, including the Epstein Barr virus. Its genome, about 170 kilobases in length, was for a long time the largest genome to have been sequenced.

Researchers are now sequencing the human genome and those of other animals. Capacity has increased substantially, equipment has become easier to use, and major advances have also been made in computer processing and data analysis.

Sigurður says he is optimistic about the future of the Experimental Station.