This year will see the full-scale roll-out of the LifeGene study. Coordinated by the Karolinska Institutet (Stockholm, Sweden), the project looks set to be one of the largest health studies performed in the world, aiming to enroll 500,000 Swedes in order to determine the relationship between disease and environmental, lifestyle and hereditary factors. International experts from a broad spectrum of scientific fields will collaborate on this project, including Mark Maeurer, Chair of the infections working group in LifeGene (www.lifegene.se). Maeurer leads the additional study on influenza-like illnesses, which is currently being run within the LifeGene project. Maeurer studied medicine in Germany, Switzerland and the USA. He is board-certified in medical microbiology, has served as Assistant Professor of Surgery at the University of Pittsburgh Medical School (PA, USA) in the Department of Surgical Oncology and Immunotherapy, as Professor of Medical Microbiology at the University of Mainz, Germany, and is now Professor of Clinical Immunology at the Microbiology and Tumor Cell Biology Center at the Karolinska Institutet. Maeurer has conducted experiments with nonhuman primate models to study TB vaccine take, with the aim to profile markers of immune protection. His general interests are in the field of immune reconstitution and memory immune responses, with a particular focus on gauging protective T-cell responses and antibody immune signatures using high-content peptide microarrays. He has published more than 100 original articles, ten book chapters and serves as a reviewer for a number of international scientific journals.