Olavi Pelkonen has MD (1973) and PhD degrees (1973). He was a post-doctoral fellow at National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland (1976-1977) and thereafter been an Associate and Full Professor of Pharmacology in Oulu, Finland (1978-2010). He has been as a visiting professor in Spain, UK and Australia. He has participated, as a partner, coordinator or working group leader, in European Union COST Actions, Framework Programmes and Marie-Curie Training consortia, and he has had numerous major grants from The Academy of Finland, Finnish Technology Research Centre and Drug Industry. He has >300 original and review articles in international scientific journals, mainly on various aspects of drug and carcinogen metabolism and its regulation by genetic and environmental factors and he was a ‘HighlyCited Researcher in pharmacology and toxicology’. He has been an invited lecturer in >150 international meetings and congresses. In 2007, he was awarded The Bo Holmstedt Memorial Lecture Award by EUROTOX and in 2010, he was a plenary lecturer in WorldPharma2010 in Copenhagen. His current interests include the development of in vitro and in silico methods for drug development and chemical risk assessment, especially regarding prediction of toxicity outcomes. He has currently expert roles at EURL-ECVAM (Ispra, Italy) and EMA (London, UK), among others, and advisory roles in various international and Finnish ad hoc committees and working groups. He has been a member of several scientific societies (IUPHAR, IUTOX, ISSX etc) and he has considerable experience in executive member or chair positions of professional societies, including Finnish Society of Pharmacology and the Drug Metabolism Section of IUPHAR. Since 2005, he has been a co-opted member with expertise in toxicology of EMA/HMPC (Committee for Herbal Medicinal Products), because of his interests in toxicology of complex, primarily plant-derived mixtures. He has published a number of original and review articles on metabolism and toxicology of herbal substances and their constituents.