Kári Stefánsson

Kári Stefánsson, (b. 1949, Iceland) is an Icelandic neurologist, who is the President, Chairman, CEO and co-founder of deCODE Genetics.

He has pioneered the monitoring of the DNA of a large fraction of an entire country's population leading to a complete genealogy of its native inhabitants. This has led to the discovery of the neuregulin-1 gene's association with schizophrenia

Kári Stefánsson was born in 1949 in Iceland. He received his M.D. in 1976 and his Dr. med. in 1986 from the University of Iceland. He went to the University of Chicago and trained in neurology, neuropathology, and neurosciences and served on the faculty there for 10 years, from 1983 until 1993. Thereafter, he was a professor of neurology, neuropathology and neuroscience at Harvard University, from 1993 until 1997. Concurrently at that time, he was director of neuropathology at Boston's Beth Israel Hospital, from 1993 to 1996. While in Boston, he and his colleague Jeffrey Gulcher decided to return to Iceland to perform genetic studies to determine multiple sclerosis risk.

In June 2012 his daughter, Sólveig "Sóla" Káradóttir, married Dhani Harrison, son of the late George Harrison and his wife, Olivia Harrison.

Kári Stefánsson founded DeCode Genetics in 1996 in the midst of concerns about privacy related to a large centralized healthcare database and the commercial use of health information and genetics. As of 2003, nearly 100,000 of 285,000 Icelandic citizens have consented and given blood to DeCode Genetics for analysis. The process has linked the country’s genetics profiles with medical records and genealogy information. This has led to the discovery of the neuregulin-1 gene's association with schizophrenia, a condition that Stefánsson’s brother has. In 2007, his compensation was $662,296. He was on the Time 100 list in 2007.

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