Rosling

The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies has named Hans Rosling, a Swedish medical doctor, academic and statistician, the 2014 Bartels World Affairs Fellow. He will deliver the Henry E. and Nancy Horton Bartels 2014 World Affairs Fellowship Lecture Sept. 9 at 4:30 p.m. in Statler Auditorium.

Rosling is professor of international health at the Karolinska Institute and co-founder and chairman of the Gapminder Foundation, which developed Trendalyzer information visualization software. Rosling makes statistical data come alive to address the global economy and to dispel common myths about the developing world. He founded the Gapminder Foundation, an organization that strives to make statistical data freely available and easily understandable online.

He began his career as a physician and spent many years in rural Africa tracking a rare paralytic disease (which he named konzo) and discovering its cause: hunger and badly processed cassava. He co-founded Doctors Without Borders Sweden, wrote a textbook on global health and has advised the World Health Organization and UNICEF.

Rosling’s presentations are grounded in statistics (often drawn from United Nations data) and illustrated by the visualization software he developed. The animations transform development statistics into moving bubbles and flowing curves that make global trends clear, intuitive and even playful.

His 20 years of research on global health concerned the character of the links between economy and health in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Rosling is also a member of the International Group of the Swedish Academy of Science and of the Global Agenda Network of the World Economic Forum in Switzerland.

The Henry E. and Nancy Horton Bartels World Affairs Fellowship was established in 1984 to bring prominent international leaders to Cornell to broaden the world view among Cornell students.