Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM)

19/10/2026

Postdoc opportunity!! 📢

Jeffrey Barrett's lab at the University of Helsinki is recruiting a post-doctoral researcher in computational genomics for predictive medicine.

His lab analyzes multiomic data to discover, understand, and measure mechanistically meaningful subtypes of complex human diseases. The team believes that characterizing diseases not by their observed clinical phenotype, but by their molecular and biological endotype, will enable better treatment for patients.

This is a great opportunity to be one of the first members of a newly established laboratory led by Professor Jeffrey Barrett, who has over 20 years’ experience leading genomics research teams.

You will benefit from hands-on supervision from Professor Barrett as well as active participation in the intellectual environments at both FIMM (genomics and molecular medicine) and the ELLIS Institute Finland (fundamentals of applied AI).

Read more about the responsibilities and qualifications here and apply by 19 November:
https://jobs.helsinki.fi/job/Helsinki-Post-doctoral-researcher-in-computational-genomics-for-predictive-medicine/1374866357/

15/10/2026

Our new ELLIS Institute Finland Professor Jeffrey Barrett recently joined The Genetics Podcast to discuss how genetics, other molecular data and AI can help uncover hidden subtypes of chronic diseases.

Read the podcast recap here:
https://sanogenetics.com/resources/blog/podcast-recap-jeffrey-barrett

Listen the episode by searching for “The Genetics Podcast” on your preferred podcast platform.

Explore the latest insights from Dr. Jeffrey Barrett on identifying chronic disease subtypes through data access and advanced models in genetics research.

13/10/2026

📢 Upcoming FIMM dissertation!

MSc Prima Sanjaya from Esa Pitkänen's group will defend the doctoral dissertation "Interpretable deep representation learning of somatic mutations for tumour classification and risk stratification" in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, on 16 October 2026 at 13:00.

Professor Matti Nykter (Tampere University) will serve as the opponent, and Esa Pitkänen as the custos.

📍 Biomedicum 1, lecture hall 2 (Haartmaninkatu 8, Helsinki) & live stream

🧬 Accurate tumour classification is essential for guiding cancer treatment, but diagnosis can be challenging in cancers with ambiguous histology, metastatic disease, or unknown primary origin. In his thesis, Prima Sanjaya developed interpretable artificial intelligence methods that classify tumours directly from patterns of somatic mutations in large-scale genome sequencing data.

✔️ The work introduces Mutation-Attention (MuAt), a deep learning model that classifies tumours directly from somatic mutation patterns and identifies clinically relevant cancer subgroups.

✔️ Building on this, Mutation-Attention Dual-Task (MuAt2) extends tumour classification to histological subtypes and improves performance across datasets.

✔️ The thesis further evaluates the reproducibility and practical deployment of these methods across secure computing environments. To support broad use in research and future clinical applications, the models were released as an open-source software package.

💡 Together, these studies demonstrate how interpretable deep learning can transform cancer genome data into clinically relevant tumour classifications, reveal biologically meaningful features, and support more precise cancer diagnostics and risk assessment.

Event page: https://tapahtumat.helsinki.fi/en-FI/page/6aa9d18ca2959eeb6bdd3daa

E-thesis: http://hdl.handle.net/10138/638512

12/10/2026

The 2026 Medix Prize has been awarded to a research team led by FIMM Group Leader Hanna M. Ollila for a study identifying genetic variants associated with the risk of long COVID.

This large international study showed that long COVID has a clear biological basis.

Our warmest congratulations to Hanna, first author Vilma Lammi and the other members of the research group for this recognition!

The Minerva Foundation Institute for Medical Research’s Medix Prize, worth €20,000, is awarded yearly for excellent Finnish scientific research, which has been published the previous year in an internationally reviewed scientific journal.

This year’s Medix Prize was awarded on 12 October at Biomedicum by Sari Lindblom, Rector of the University of Helsinki.

The 2026 Medix Prize has been awarded to a research team led by Hanna M. Ollila for a study identifying genetic variants associated with the risk of long COVID. The large international study, led by the University of Helsinki, showed that long COVID has a clear biological basis.

09/10/2026

Researchers at FIMM have developed a computational framework for estimating cellular diversity in single-cell datasets.

The method, just published in Nature Communications, provides a new way to assess the completeness of single-cell studies and addresses a longstanding challenge in understanding how much of a tissue's cellular diversity has been captured.

Drawing inspiration from ecological research, where estimating undiscovered species in an ecosystem is an established approach, the method adapts incidence-based richness estimators to evaluate how comprehensively single-cell datasets capture cellular “species”.

Mitro Miihkinen, Tero Aittokallio and colleagues also emphasize the distinction between sequencing depth and biological sampling.

According to the study, increasing the number of cells from an individual sample does not necessarily compensate for insufficient sampling across donors or spatially distinct tissue regions, particularly when cellular composition varies between biological samples.

Read more:

Researchers at FIMM have developed a computational framework for estimating cellular diversity in single-cell datasets. The method provides a new way to assess the completeness of single-cell studies and addresses a longstanding challenge in understanding how much of a tissue's cellular diversity ha...

30/09/2026

Upcoming FIMM dissertation! 📢

MSc Yevhen Akimov from Tero Aittokallio's group will defend the doctoral dissertation entitled "High-resolution profiling of cancer cell phenotypes via statistical analysis of DNA barcode data" in the Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki, on 2 October 2026 at 12:00.

Professor Rolf Skotheim (University of Oslo) will serve as the opponent, and Ville Mustonen as the custos.

🏛️ The public examination will take place at Athena, room 107 (Siltavuorenpenger 3 A, Helsinki) and can also be followed via a live stream.

🧬 Intratumoral heterogeneity plays an important role in cancer evolution, therapeutic resistance, and relapse. In his thesis, Yevhen Akimov developed new computational approaches and experimental methods for high-resolution profiling of cancer cell phenotypes using DNA barcode-based lineage tracing.

💻 The work introduces DEBRA (DESeq-based Barcode Representation Analysis), a statistical framework for analysing DNA barcode data from lineage-tracing experiments.

🔬 Using DNA barcoding together with multiple phenotypic assays, the research revealed diverse clonal subpopulations of ovarian cancer cells with different characteristics and responses to the chemotherapy drug carboplatin. The approach was also applied to pooled CRISPR-Cas9 screening to identify potential vulnerabilities in ovarian cancer.

💡 Together, these studies demonstrate how high-resolution lineage tracing can be used to uncover differences between cancer cell clones and identify potential cancer vulnerabilities.

Event page: https://tapahtumat.helsinki.fi/en-FI/page/6aa48b8da2959eeb6bdd34f7

E-thesis: http://hdl.handle.net/10138/638322

29/09/2026

Geenit, ympäristö vai yksilön valinnat?

Lapsen vanhemmiltaan perimät geenit yhdessä kasvuympäristön kanssa ohjaavat monella tapaa ihmisen elämänkulkua. Miten perimä, ympäristötekijät ja elintavat vaikuttavat esimerkiksi terveyteen ja yksilön käyttäytymiseen?

Mikäli Tiedekulmassa viikko sitten järjestetty tapahtuma jäi välistä, tapahtuman tallenne on nyt katsottavissa Tiedekulman sivuilla.

Tapahtuma tarjoaa kolme näkökulmaa siihen, miten geenit ja ympäristö vaikuttavat elämäämme:

Mikä on geenien rooli sairauksien synnyssä ja hoidossa?
Samuli Ripatti, biometrian professori, Suomen molekyylilääketieteen instituutin johtaja, Helsingin yliopisto

Miten ympäristö muokkaa geeniemme toimintaa? Epigenetiikan jäljet terveydessä ja vanhenemisessa
Miina Ollikainen, epigenetiikan dosentti, Helsingin yliopisto & Lääketieteellinen tutkimuslaitos Minerva

Miten geenit ja kasvuympäristö ohjaavat yksilön valintoja? Esimerkkinä rikollisuus
Antti Latvala, kriminologian professori, Helsingin yliopisto

Sairastummeko syöpään tai olemmeko alttiita mielenterveyden ongelmille? Kuka päätyy tekemään rikoksia todennäköisemmin kuin muut? Entä miten ihmisen elintavat ja ympäristötekijät voivat vaikuttaa vielä seuraavaan sukupolveen? Lapsen vanhemmiltaan perimät geenit y...

25/09/2026

Catching up on some well-deserved Young Investigator of the Month recognitions from the summer!

Our July honoree, Aino Aaltonen, is a doctoral researcher in the Cognitive and Brain Aging group led by Eero Vuoksimaa. She studies early identification of Alzheimer’s disease using a multidisciplinary approach across psychology, neurosciences and epidemiology.

In her recent first-author publication "Genetic architecture of Alzheimer's disease-related plasma biomarkers" in Neurobiology of Aging, Aino investigated novel plasma biomarkers and their genetic architecture with Finnish twin data. Congratulations!

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The Young Investigator of the Month honor at FIMM is a monthly highlight of a FIMM PhD student or postdoctoral researcher for a recent significant accomplishment.
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23/09/2026

Meet the 2026 cohort of the FIMM-EMBL International PhD Programme!

Each year, we welcome a small group of early-career researchers selected through the competitive FIMM-EMBL International PhD Programme call.

The training starts with research group rotations, allowing the new doctoral researchers to spend six to nine months working in several FIMM groups before choosing where to carry out their doctoral studies.

Meet the six new doctoral researchers who joined FIMM in August, and find out what brought them here, what they hope to explore during their PhD and what they are looking forward to in the year ahead. 👇

For 17 years, the FIMM-EMBL International PhD Programme has supported early-career researchers as they begin their scientific careers at FIMM. This autumn, six new doctoral researchers have joined the programme. Let’s welcome them!

22/09/2026

📢 Upcoming FIMM dissertation!

MSc Aino Heikkinen from Miina Ollikainen’s group will defend the doctoral dissertation entitled "DNA methylation links mitochondrial biogenesis to obesity and aging" in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, on 25 September 2026 at 12:00.

Assistant Professor Ida Karlsson (Karolinska Institutet) will serve as the opponent, and Professor Kirsi Pietilainen as the custos.

The public examination will take place at the following address: Biomedicum, Lecture Hall 3 (Haartmaninkatu 8, Helsinki).

🔬 Obesity is associated with alterations in mitochondrial metabolism, but the mechanisms linking these changes to long-term metabolic health and aging are not fully understood. In her thesis, Aino Heikkinen investigated how DNA methylation, an epigenetic mechanism that regulates gene activity, is connected to mitochondrial biogenesis and obesity.

🧬The work identified links between DNA methylation, mitochondrial DNA quantity, and obesity-related traits, providing new insights into the molecular pathways underlying metabolic health and disease.

💡 The findings may help identify novel biomarkers and therapeutic targets for obesity-related disorders and healthy aging.

Event page: https://tapahtumat.helsinki.fi/en-FI/page/6a8cd08ca2959eeb6bdd0dd4/aino-heikkinen-dna-methylation-links-mitochondrial-biogenesis-to-obesity-and

E-thesis: http://hdl.handle.net/10138/637026