Per Ljungman was born in Stockholm 1950. He studied medicine at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm and became MD in 1975. He did his residency in internal medicine and fellowship in hematology at Huddinge University Hospital and is board certified in Sweden in hematology and internal medicine. He became PhD in virology also at the Karolinska Institutet in 1985 with a thesis “Herpesvirus Infections in Bone Marrow Transplant recipients”. Subsequently he became associate professor 1986. During 1986-1987 he was a postdoc in infectious diseases at the University of Washington and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA. After returning to Stockholm, he became senior physician at the Dept. of Hematology at Huddinge University Hospital in 1990 and was director of the department 1998 – 2003. 2000 he became adjunct professor of hematology at Karolinska Institutet. In 2004 the two university hospitals in Stockholm merged and he became director of the combined Dept. of Hematology at Karolinska University hospital a position he held until 2013. From 2014 – 2017 he was Director of the Dept. of Allogeneic Stem Cell Transplantation at Karolinska and is currently senior physician in the Dept. of Cellular Therapy and Allogeneic Stem Cell Transplantation and emeritus professor at Karolinska Institutet.

He has been a scientific advisory board member to the Swedish Medical Products agency 2002 – 2021 and an alternate member of the Committee for Advanced Therapy, European Medicines Agency 2009 – 2011. Furthermore, he is the Swedish JACIE representative since 2005, JACIE inspector, and worked on the 8th version of the FACT/JACIE standards.

Per Ljungman has had several leading positions in international societies. He was a founding member of the Infections Diseases Working Party of the EBMT and it’s first chair 1992 – 1998. From 1998 – 2004 he chaired the EBMT registry committee before coming secretary of the EBMT 2004 - 2010. In 2011 he again became registry committee chair a position he still holds. He has also been a council member of the International Immunocompromised Host Society for 12 years including being its president 2008 – 2010. He is work package leader for supportive care within the European Leukemia Net and a founding member and is on the council of the European Conference of Infections in Leukemia. He is also the Academic co-chair, Transplantation Associated Virus Infection Forum within the Forum for Collaborative Research, Univ. of California Berkeley, CA since 2014.

He has been guest professor at the University College London 1998 – 2000, at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 2005 and a visiting scientist at the University of Florida and Shands hospital, Gainesville, FL 2013 – 2014.

He is honorary member of the Swedish Society for Hematology (2018) and the EBMT (2019). He also received the “Lifetime Achievement Award” from the International Immunocompromised Host society 2022 and became fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (FIDSA) also in 2022.

His research interests have been virus infections in the severely immunocompromised host represented by patients undergoing allogeneic stem cell transplantation primarily CMV, other herpesviruses, and community acquired respiratory virus infections most recently SARS-CoV-2 currently chairing the EBMT COVID-19 Task Force. Another research area where Per Ljungman has been very active is in vaccination of stem cell transplant patients. He has performed several clinical trials as principal investigator both regarding antivirals and vaccines.

He has written a large number of peer-reviewed papers (currently > 450), guidelines, and book chapters mainly about allogeneic stem cell transplantation and infectious complications and co-editor of the book Transplant Infections now in its 4^th edition. He is also Associate Editor of Bone Marrow Transplantation since several years.