Ulrik Wisløff

Professor Wisloff is a researcher, a professor and an entrepreneur in the field of exercise physiology, and the Head of the Cardiac Exercise Research Group (55 employees) (ntnu.edu/cerg) at the Dept. of Circulation and Medical Imaging, Norwegian University of Science and Technology. He is a Honorary Professor at University of Queensland Australia, and Head of Physical Performance at Rosenborg FC (rbk.no) Wisloff was appointed professor in 2008 and quickly built up an international, transdisciplinary, and competitive group, as documented by about 340 peer-reviewed publications and ~127 000 citations per March 2024. According to Google Scholar, he figures among the world’s 4 most cited scientists in the broad field of “exercise” and the worlds most cited Exercise Physiologist (https://scholar.google.no/citations?hl=en&view_op=search_authors&mauthors=label%3Aexercise+physiology&btnG=). Many of his publications demonstrate his group’s capacity to translate basic experimental research into clinical use in a short timeframe. He has served as PI of several successful national and international collaborations. He has chaired the European Union-funded FP7 project OptimEx, a multi-continental study, and a large 5-year prospective randomized exercise-trial with more than 1600 older adults (NCT01666340). Currently (2024) He is PI of NorEx (ntnu.no/cerg/norex)(NCT04617639) in which 9700 patients with myocardial infarction are randomized to exercise training or a control group aiming to finally determine whether exercise training actually reduce re-infarctions and give longer and better lives of these patients. He is also the PI of ExPlas (NCT05068830) where they are examining the effect of plasma transfusions from young fit individuals upon cognitive function in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. He has for 6-years been the PI of the successfully “My Medical Digital Twin Project” leading a group researchers (6 professors, 6 PhDs, 1 post-doc) from six departments with very different scientific backgrounds that have been collaborating to create a medical digital twin that can both monitor the blood pressure of each individual and provide tailored treatment advice. This project was completed by July 2023 and is taken further in a NTNU-spin-off company, Mia Health (miahealth.no/en). Wisloff and colleagues provided the first causative evidence that low exercise capacity per se dramatically increased risk of heart disease. The study published in Science in 2005, with commentary in Nature Medicine, was ranked as one of the most important papers in the metabolism field at the time. They subsequently showed that high-intensity exercise training was safe and lead to superior improvements in aerobic capacity (fitness) and cardiac function in heart failure patients (Circulation, 2007). This line of research formed the basis for his research group; with later studies showing optimal results with high intensity exercise in various lifestyle related disorders. They revealed that temporal changes in resting heart rate predict death from heart disease in the general population (JAMA, 2011). This led to creation of a calculator to estimate fitness and so predict death in the general population. To date 80.5 million users have used the fitness calculator and The American Heart Association now advocates the use of our fitness calculator in clinical practice (Circulation, 2016). Wisløff is also the inventor of the Personalized Activity Intelligence (PAI); a metric that calculates how much physical activity a person needs to be protected against life-style related disease and premature death. PAI app is free and available in all app stores (used by more than 70 million people worldwide). His group has translated basic experimental evidence into clinical trials (and patient benefit) within a short timeframe of 10 years, with research spanning from molecules to society, and back again. His record of accomplishment demonstrates leadership, capability and innovation required to perform ground-breaking research. He is also a committed mentor who actively supports next generation scientists and have personally supervised 22 postdoctoral fellows and 38 PhD students, who have gone on to have successful careers in both industry and academia. He has the qualities to continue to be a lead scientist and inventor to use his research and innovation knowledge for a better and healthier population worldwide. He has received several award for his research and the most prestigious one was handed over to him by King of Norway Harald V in 2020 – best Norwegian Heart Researcher Award. His total career funding (since 2008) is about 550 000 000 NOK (ca. 55 000 000 Euros).