Biography

Wittung-Stafshede earned a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry in 1996 from Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden. She conducted postdoctoral research from 1997 to1998 at the California Institute of Technology in California. In 1999, she began her independent academic career as Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana. In 2004, she joined Rice University as Associate Professor with tenure in the Biosciences Department. In 2008, she returned to Sweden to become Full Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Umeå University. In 2015, she moved to Chalmers University of Technology to join the newly founded Life Sciences Department, where she also served as Head of the Chemical Biology Division for three years. In July 2025, she rejoined Rice University as Professor of Chemistry. During her academic career in the US and Sweden, she has made pioneering discoveries around the role of metals in protein folding, macromolecular crowding effects on folding reactions, as well as on mechanisms of copper-transport proteins. Her current research focuses on unraveling underlying mechanisms of devastating human diseases involving amyloids.

Wittung-Stafshede was elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of the Sciences in 2016 and to the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences in 2020. In 2024, she became an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and was elected to the European Academy of Sciences and the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters. She has received numerous awards during her career, for example the Arrhenius medal, the IUPAC Distinguished Women in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Award, and Biophysical Society Fellow. In 2020 she joined the Nobel Prize in Chemistry committee and, 2021, became a member of the scientific council for the Lindau Nobel Laureate meetings. For more than a decade, she has contributed to the Biophysical Society in various leadership roles.

Wittung-Stafshede has trained numerous doctoral and postdoctoral students, many of whom have continued to successful careers in academic and industry. In 2019, she launched and led the Gender Initiative for Excellence, a long-term initiative at Chalmers, which aimed to increase research excellence via recruitment and cultural/systemic changes. She is actively engaged in outreach and popular science to inspire the public and young students. She has two daughters, born in 2001 and 2005.