Hans Rosling

Hans Rosling

Co-Founder, Gapminder Foundation

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Hans Rosling is a Professor of international health, co-founder of the Gapminder Foundation and international educator in global health trends. He is also a member of the Swedish Academy of Sciences.

When working as a young doctor in Mozambique, Professor Rosling discovered a previously unrecognized paralytic disease that his research team named Konzo. His 20 years of research since has focused on links between economic development, agriculture, poverty and health. He has been a health adviser to WHO, UNICEF and several aid agencies. In 1993 he was one of the initiators of Médecins Sans Frontières in Sweden.

Professor Hans Rosling and his son and daughter-in-law founded the Gapminder Foundation, which promotes a fact-based world view. Gapminder developed the Trendalyzer software that converts international statistics into moving, interactive and understandable graphics. The software was originally developed as a tool for improving teaching at Karolinska Institutet.

Using animations of global trends, Professor Rosling lectures about past and contemporary economic, social and environmental changes in the world and he produces award-winning thematic videos using the same technique. The interactive animations are freely available from the Foundation's website (www.gapminder.org).

Between October 2014 – January 2015, Professor Rosling cancelled all his lectures and other commitments to become the deputy chief epidemiologist at the Ministry of Health in Liberia for 3 months during the ongoing Ebola outbreak.

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