Giske Ursin was appointed Director of the Cancer Registry of Norway in 2011. She also has a part-time position as professor II at the Department of Basic Medical Sciences at the University of Oslo. Ursin is a qualified medical doctor, i.e. Cand.med from the University of Bergen in 1987. She also holds a Master of Public Health from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), and a PhD in epidemiology from the same place in 1992. Ursin also works as a researcher and has a particular interest in breast cancer and hormonal factors, and has worked extensively with molecular-epidemiological issues and subtypes of breast cancer.
Giske Ursin is Director of the Cancer Registry of Norway as well as a researcher. She is also professor II at the Institute of Basic Medical Sciences at the University of Oslo, and professor emerita at the Keck School of Medicine of University of Southern California (USC).
She has worked on a number of different topics in cancer epidemiology, including classical risk factors for cancer, molecular markers, clinical epidemiological studies as well as epidemiological issues in screening. She has also worked with legal challenges related to data sharing internationally.
Ursin has a particular interest in breast cancer and hormonal factors, both with regard to who develops which tumors and prognostic factors afterwards. She has worked extensively on molecular-epidemiological issues and subtypes of breast cancer.
She has also worked with mammographic density, both as a risk factor for breast cancer, and investigated how various hormonal factors affect mammograms. Ursin is interested in how cancer patients fare after diagnosis, or so-called patient-reported outcome measures, and what factors make some patients report better health-related quality of life than others.
Furthermore, Ursin has worked with a number of dietary and lifestyle factors and a variety of cancers, both in Norway, USA and in international pooled analyses.
She is involved in several projects in screening and cancer. In addition, she is involved in projects on prevalence in different immigrant groups and trends over time, as well as large registry linkages.
Ursin leads a Nordic project on Covid-19 and cancer, and is involved in a follow-up study on Covid-19.
Ursin has also been involved in issues related to legal challenges related to data sharing following GDPR.
As professor II at the University of Oslo, she teaches nutritional epidemiology at the Institute of Basic Medical Sciences and epidemiological methods for PhD students at the University of Oslo. She has supervised a number of PhD candidates and postdoctoral fellows, and is also active in external academic councils and evaluation committees.
Ursin is a medical doctor, i.e. Cand.med. graduated from the University of Bergen in 1987. She also holds a Master of Public Health from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), and a PhD in epidemiology from the same institution from 1992.
That same year, she was hired as a postdoc at the Department of Preventive Medicine, Keck School of Medicine of USC, then Assistant Professor, Associate Professor with tenure and finally Professor with tenure. She is currently professor emeritae at the same university.
Ursin was employed as Professor at the Department of Nutrition, Institute of Basic Medical Sciences at the University of Oslo from 2001 to 2010. Today she has a part-time position there as Professor II.
Stress management after breast cancer
COVID-19 and cancer in the Nordic countries
New cancer treatment and survival
Cancer risk and survival from drug use
Various consortium projects - examples:
Mammographic Consortium
Hormones and cancer
Various NCI consortium projects- international collaboration initiated by the National Cancer Institute (USA), in which data or results are collected from different cohort studies.
