20 September 2022

Nurse Gunilla Lööf has fought for more than 25 years for the right of children and adolescents to prepare themselves for their interaction with the healthcare system; she has also founded the innovative healthcare website the Anaesthesia Web. Artist and film director Salad Hilowle works to make people of African descent a natural part of Swedish cultural history. Gunilla and Salad are Linköping University’s Alumni of the Year for 2022.

Two persons smiles in the camera.
Gunilla Lööf and Salad Hilowle are the 2022 Alumni of the Year at Linköping University. Photographer: Thor Balkhed

Ever since she studied nursing at Linköping University, Gunilla Lööf has been a living example of problem-based learning, the pedagogical model that LiU was first to introduce in Sweden. For more than 25 years she has worked to make interaction with the healthcare system easier for children and families around the world. Gunilla Lööf is a nurse anaesthetist at the Astrid Lindgren Children’s Hospital in Stockholm, and researcher at Karolinska Institutet.

She is co-founder of Operation Smile Sweden, which provides free surgery for children with cleft lip and palate, and she founded the Anaesthesia Web, an innovative website that helps prepare thousands of children for surgery. A person sits in a chair in a garden.Gunilla Lööf.
In the autumn of 2022, she launched her next major project, the healthcare site MediPrep, which provides medical information that is specially adapted to children and adolescents.

Possibilities for change

Salad Hilowle, graduate of LiU’s Culture, Society and Media Production programme, is an artist and filmmaker with a master’s from the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. He has rapidly made a name for himself in the Swedish art world.
He has created exhibitions and films that make visible Afro-Swedes in Swedish art and culture, including his acclaimed debut exhibition Vanus Labor. Salad Hilowle works to make people of African descent a natural part of Swedish cultural history, and by highlighting historical inequalities and stereotypes, he suggests possibilities for change. Salad Hlowle.

He has received numerous awards, including the Engman Scholarship, the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts’ Bernadotte Scholarship and the Swedish Film Academy’s scholarship in memory of Kurt Linder.

Alumni of the Year to be honoured in Linköping

On 7 October, the Alumni of the Year will receive their awards at LiU’s University Hospital Campus in Linköping. The ceremony will be broadcast live on YouTube, so as many as possible will be able to hear the stories of the alumni. Every year, Linköping University selects two Alumni of the Year, to celebrate the engagement and achievements of former students.

Here you can read more about the Alumni of the Year.

Read more about the award

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