Leading his deCODE colleagues to continually build and re-query these population datasets, Stefansson has made a steady stream of contributions to the understanding of how variation in the sequence of the genome is generated and its impact on health and disease. Myles Axton, the longtime editor of "Nature Genetics", noted at deCODE's 20th anniversary celebration that this leadership had put deCODE and Iceland "in the forefront of a revolution that has delivered much of what was promised in the mapping of the human genome."  