Jasaman (Jasmin) Tojjar

Dr. Jasaman (Jasmin) Tojjar is a physician-scientist whose career spans two continents, weaving together clinical medicine, translational research, and healthcare innovation. She holds both an MD and PhD from Lund University — ranked #72 globally (QS 2026) and home to Sweden's most competitive medical program, consistently requiring the highest admission scores nationally — and completed a clinical research fellowship at UCLA's Jules Stein Eye Institute and Doheny Eye Institute, one of the world's premier ophthalmic research centers.

Her doctoral thesis, "Aspects of Sex Differences in Type 1 Diabetes," used Swedish nationwide population-based cohorts to reveal how biological sex influences diabetes onset, autoimmunity patterns, and clinical outcomes in children — findings published in Diabetes Care (Impact Factor: 16.6), the most-cited clinical diabetes journal and flagship publication of the American Diabetes Association. At UCLA, she expanded into advanced retinal imaging and diabetic retinopathy under Prof. SriniVas R. Sadda and Prof. David Sarraf — performing clinical assessments and ophthalmic imaging in retinal clinics, including swept-source OCT angiography and ultra-widefield fundus photography, and conducting research that bridges her diabetes expertise with ophthalmology through the lens of microvascular disease.

Beyond research, Dr. Tojjar has maintained continuous clinical involvement throughout her career — from performing patient assessments in UCLA's retinal clinics to supervised clinical training in a rural Arizona family medicine clinic, where she worked alongside physicians and saw patients at the Regional Center for Border Health. She held an active Arizona Medical Board Transitional Training Permit (R81155) during this period. This combination of hands-on patient care and population-level research informs her approach to clinical medicine.

Born and raised in Lund, Sweden, Dr. Tojjar graduated from Katedralskolan — widely recognized as Scandinavia's oldest school, founded in 1085. A dedicated educator and leader, she has served on multiple innovation boards including LU Innovation, LU Ventures (formerly known as LU Holding), Medicon Bridge, and the MultiHelix Think Tank, mentored junior researchers at both UCLA and Lund, supervised medical students from the University of Arizona College of Medicine during her Arizona clinical training, and taught over 200 medical students annually as a lecturer in physiology and histology. She speaks seven languages and is ECFMG-certified.