Dr. Jan F Nygård earned his Cybernetics engineering degree from Oslo College of Engineering in 1991, minor in Political Science (1998) and a PhD in Epidemiology (2005) from the University of Oslo.

He began his career at the Institute of Community Medicine, University of Oslo (1992-1998) before joining the Cancer Registry of Norway in 1999. Since 2007, he has led the IT/Registry Informatics Department. 

His research focuses on the convergence of big data analytics, machine learning, data privacy, secure computing, and epidemiology. He has published 89 original research papers in peer-reviewed journals, and supervised MSc and PhD students from informatics and medical faculties. He also contributes to reference and steering committees.

In 2017, he was a visiting scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and as of July 1, 2021, he holds the position of Adjunct Associate Professor in the Machine Learning Group at UiT – The Artic University of Norway.