Øystein Evensen is head of the research group "Host-pathogen interactions in infection and immunity" at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. He got his degree in veterinary medicine from the Norwegian School of Veterinary Science in 1984 and his PhD in pathology from the same institution in 1987. He worked for more than 10 years after his PhD as a post-doc and research scientist at the Norwegian Veterinary Institute in Oslo, Norway, and more than 7 years in the pharmaceutical industry - Alpharma - (1995-2002), later to become PHARMAQ, with the development of vaccines for finfish, particularly salmon. Over the last 22 years, he has been a full professor at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, where he heads a research group of more than 15 people that includes 2 associate professors, several research scientists, post-docs, and PhD students. The research group focuses on viral and bacterial diseases of farmed salmon, mechanisms of infection, and vaccine development. The work is funded through projects from the Research Council of Norway (Havbruk and FriPro), the EU Framework program, and the pharmaceutical industry. The primary research focus over the last few years has been cardiomyopathy syndrome of Atlantic salmon, and the research group was the first to describe the cause of the disease, the piscine myocarditis virus. The group has ongoing research programs on the pancreas disease virus. Evensen's groups also work on developing vaccines against sea lice infection/infestation in Atlantic salmon, with financial support from FHF (Seafood Research Fund). The research group is heavily involved in research and capacity building in Africa (Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Ghana) through two NORHED-II (NORAD)-funded research programs. These programs focus on capacity building and training young research scientists in the south in fish health and environmental health. Through this involvement, there has been a lot of focus on the tilapia lake virus, diagnostic methods, and pathogenesis studies.