Professor emerita Outi Hovatta has been researching fertility for nearly 40 years. She was the first researcher in Sweden to derive and grow embryonic stem cells. Her group in Stockholm is also among the foremost in the world when it comes to developing completely clean lines, which can be used for future treatments. Prof. em. Hovatta has helped countless infertile couples and derived over 30 different human embryonic stem cell lines. Between 1998 and 2013 she was the chief physician of the fertility unit at Karolinska University Hospital Huddinge in Stockholm. She held a professorship at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, and was a senior professor before retiring in 2016.