Siv Andersson is full professor and head of the Dept. of Molecular Evolution at teh Evolutionary Biology Center at Uppsala University. She is also the founding chair of the Linnaeus Center for Bioinformatics at Uppsala University and the Swedish Agricultural University. Dr. Andersson received her PhD from Uppsala University in Molecular Biology and did her postdoctoral studies on neuronal development at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK and at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, New York. Over the past decade, her research has focused on microbial genomics, bioinformatics and molecular evolution. She and her group have completed the first genome sequence in Sweden on the typhus pathogen. She is currently sequencing and analysing genomes from several microbial pathogens and symbionts.

Dr. Andersson has initiated new educational programs in bioinformatics at Uppsala University. She is the Principle Investigator of the Swedish Learning Lab-project "Bioinformatics - Learning in information intense, dynamic and cross-disciplinary environments". During the last few years, she has started a variety of courses in bioinformatics, including on-site courses in Uppsala, on-line courses in Sweden as well as intensive courses open to students from all over Europe. She is one of the founding participants in S-star.org. She is particularly interested in the development of technologies and strategies that facilitate learning activities across the traditional sub-disciplines and bioinformatics is her experimental test-system.