Sten Grillner studied Medicine at the University of Göteborg in Sweden and obtained a PhD in neurophysiology in 1969. He did a brief postdoc at the Academy of Science in Moscow in 1971, and then became an associate professor in Göteborg. He moved to the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm in 1975 as professor, and in 1986 he moved to its Nobel Institute for Neurophysiology, becoming Distinguished Professor at the Karolinska Institute in 2010. He is currently President of the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS), and member of the Academia Europeae, the Swedish and the Norwegian Academies of Science, the US National Academy, the US Institute of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and received the Kavli award in Neuroscience in 2008. He served on the Nobel Assembly of the Karolinska Institute, with responsibility for the prize for Physiology and Medicine, for more than 20 years, starting in 1987, and headed the Nobel Committee for some years.