In Memory of Kjersti Skjold Rønningen

By Lars Christian Stene

Kjersti Skjold Rønningen passed away unexpectedly on Friday, 21 March 2025, at the age of 66. As a physician, Kjersti wrote her doctoral thesis, "HLA associations in Insulin-Dependent Diabetes Mellitus," at the Institute of Transplantation Immunology at Rikshospitalet. She defended her thesis for the degree of Doctor medicinae (dr. med.) at the University of Oslo on 17 December 1991, and was one of the world's leading experts on the role of HLA genes in the development of type 1 diabetes.

Photo: Private

After a research stay in Edmonton, Canada, she worked as a researcher at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH) from 1998 to 2010. She led the establishment of the biobank for the Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort Study (MoBa), which is currently the NIPH biobank, storing millions of biological samples from many studies. At the same time, she also designed and initiated the MIDIA study, which monitored newborns in Norway with HLA genes that predispose them to type 1 diabetes. This study included the collection of longitudinal stool and blood samples, as well as questionnaire data related to MIDIA - NIPH. The study contributes to the ongoing EU-funded HEDIMED study, together with other Nordic birth cohorts HEDIMED – Oslo Diabetes Research Center.

Kjersti’s overarching goal was to identify the environmental causes of type 1 diabetes, making it possible to prevent the disease and spare future generations from the condition with which she herself lived. Although this has proven challenging, her efforts have contributed significantly to understanding the causes of the disease. Many of her former PhD students and postdoctoral fellows continue to work on type 1 diabetes or other biomedical research, and the studies she initiated will continue to make valuable contributions to health research for many years to come. For the past years, she worked at the Norwegian Directorate of Health.