Department of Medical Genetics

Head of department: Dag Undlien
Head of research: Vessela N. Kristensen

The Department of Medical Genetics is Norway’s largest medical genetics department with over 200 employees. The department is responsible for diagnostics of rare and inherited diseases, and the main activities are clinical genetic testing, genetic counselling including assistance in connection with prenatal diagnosis, genetic laboratory diagnostics, and genetic research and teaching. The department also runs a national research infrastructure for high-throughput DNA sequencing at the Norwegian Consortium for Sequencing and Personalized Medicine (www.norseq.org). 

The research section is run in collaboration with Institute of Clinical Medicine at the University of Oslo. Several research groups are working in various fields of medical genetics, including breast cancer, the genetics of autoimmune, neurological, cardiovascular and psychiatric disorders, epigenetics causes of disease, as well as groups focusing on bioinformatics and system evolution. 

By harnessing state of the art sequencing technology our department aims to develop a platform that will take diagnosis and treatment to the next level by providing personalized medicine for the Norwegian population.

Report Department of Medical Genetics 2022/2023 - Report Department of Medical Genetics 2020/2021

News

Blog post: Behind the scenes at NSC

From the blog post. Photo: Kotryna Cebatoriute
From the blog post. Photo: Kotryna Cebatoriute

The Norwegian Sequencing Centre (NSC) is hosting Kotryna Cebatoriute, who is UiO bachelor student at the Department of Medical Genetics. She has written a blog post (in Norwegian) under the UiO blog "Biopraksis", about behind the scenes at NSC:
Bak kulissene hos NSC – alt mellom prøver og sekvensering (mn.uio.no)

Project groups

Slide show - Medical Genetics

Annual retreat, Grefsenkollen 4th December 2025
Photo: Bård Gudim AS, Research and development, spring 2024
Annual retreat, Halden, 2-3. May 2022 (To view in extra large format: open as jpg or PDF)
Bygg 25: Photo: Bård Gudim AS
Annual retreat, Fornebu 6.June 2023 (To view in extra large format: open as jpg or PDF)
Annual retreat, Soria Moria 11.Dec 2019, Photo: Robert Lyle (To view in extra large format: open as jpg or PDF)