Mia Phillipson, Ph.D. is a professor in Physiology at Uppsala University, and also the Co-Director of Science for Life Laboratory (www.SciLifeLab.se), a national infrastructure for life sciences in Sweden. The research of Dr Phillipson has a strong trans-disciplinary approach spanning the fields of physiology, microbiology and immunology, with the outermost goal to uncover immune cell contributions important during development, to maintain health, as well as during development of disease. The Phillipson laboratory today involves 14 co-workers, of which 8 are PhD students. The most important discoveries of Dr Phillipson include the contributions of distinct immune cell populations in restoring and regulating blood perfusion by inducing transdifferentiation at the injured site. These discoveries were demonstrated to be important for healing injuries, and can be utilized when developing immunotherapies to accelerate healing and restore tissue function. As direct results of her research, a spin-off company, Ilya Pharma, was formed, which is currently in Phase 2 clinical development of a drug candidate to accelerate wound healing and to treat colitis by targeting local immune cells by on-site production of human immunoactive proteins by probiotic bacteria. Prof Phillipson is a Knut and Alice Wallenberg Scholar and a member of The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.