HiLIFE has recently recruited top-level researchers from over 400 high quality applicants together with the faculties of the University of Helsinki. The recruitment for tenure track Assistant and Associate Professor positions started in August 2024 and the appointments were made by Rector Sari Lindblom on May 26, 2025.
“We are extremely pleased with the outstanding level of early-career researchers joining HiLIFE and the University of Helsinki. These talented scientists will advance cutting-edge research and contribute to raising the international profile of our life science research,” says Jari Koistinaho, Director of HiLIFE.
“I’m also proud of how we successfully carried out a demanding and competitive evaluation process with over 430 applicants. It was a great collaborative effort together with the highly professional appointment committee,” Koistinaho continues.
HiLIFE warmly welcomes the five new tenure track Assistant and Associate Professors to the community!
Heidi Haikala, PhD, MBA, is a cancer biologist and group leader at the University of Helsinki, where she steers the HaikaLab immuno-oncology research group within the Translational Immunology Research Program. Since 2024, she has also served as an Assistant Professor at Tampere University. She completed her PhD at the University of Helsinki and pursued postdoctoral training with Prof. Pasi Jänne at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute & Harvard Medical School, focusing on drug resistance in lung cancer, with work that contributed to a clinical trial for lung cancer patients. Her group investigates primary targeted and immunotherapy resistance and develops functional precision medicine approaches using patient-derived 3D co-cultures and organ-on-chip models. Heidi is also a co-founder of Solid IO, a spin-off company developing individualized diagnostics for cancer immunotherapies.
Heidi starts as an Assistant Professor in Cancer Biology on June 1, 2025, with primary affiliation at HiLIFE and secondary affiliation at the Faculty of Medicine.
Eliisa Kekäläinen and her team studies the human adaptive immune system especially focusing on the human thymus which produces important effector and regulator cells of immune responses - the T cells. The big aim is to understand better how the thymus functions throughout human lifespan and under different kinds of stressors such as infections and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. The thymus is the first tissue to age in our body and understanding this process better could lead to treatments where the function of the thymus could be restored when needed. Additionally she wants to develop new diagnostic methods for immunomonitoring.
Eliisa starts as an Associate Professor in Clinical Microbiology and Immunology on June 1, 2025, with primary affiliation at the Faculty of Medicine and secondary affiliation at HiLIFE.
Docent Panu Luukkonen received his PhD in medicine from the University of Helsinki in 2018 and deepened his research training during a postdoctoral period at Yale University in the United States in 2019-2022. He was awarded the title of docent in experimental hepatology at the University of Helsinki in 2021. Since 2022, Luukkonen has led a research group investigating the role of hepatic mitochondrial metabolism in the development of metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease. The group's work applies a translational approach that combines genetics, metabolomics, stable isotope techniques, as well as population data, clinical metabolic studies and cell culture models. Luukkonen is also affiliated with the Minerva Foundation Institute for Medical Research and works in clinical work at HUS, treating patients with liver diseases.
Panu starts as an Associate Professor in Translational Internal Medicine on June 1, 2025, with primary affiliation at HiLIFE and secondary affiliation at the Faculty of Medicine.
Dr. Alexander Mühleip is a structural biologist and biochemist and has been leading a research group at the Institute of Biotechnology within the Helsinki Institute of Life Science (HiLIFE) at the University of Helsinki since December 2023. Alexander earned his PhD in 2017, following research conducted at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics. His group investigates the structure and function of mitochondrial membrane-shaping protein complexes in human parasites, as well as the role of mitochondrial energy-converting complexes in human mitochondrial disorders. Utilizing advanced techniques such as high-resolution cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and in situ cryo-tomography, the team aims to elucidate how these protein complexes organize mitochondrial membranes. The focus of the group’s ERC-funded research is on understanding mitochondrial dynamics in the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum, which has implications for developing novel antimalarial therapies.
Alexander starts as an Assistant Professor in Biochemistry on June 1, 2025, with primary affiliation at HiLIFE and secondary affiliation at the Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences.
Shiqi Wang is currently the group leader at the Faculty of Pharmacy since 2023. She earned her Ph.D. from Department of chemical Engineering, Imperial College London in 2018, developing polymeric materials for intracellular drug delivery. During her postdoc at the University of Helsinki, she continued to explore the potential of polymeric materials as drug delivery systems, especially as non-viral vectors for gene therapy. Her current research focuses on the fundamental understanding of how nanoparticles deliver biological drugs inside cells. Her team at Intracellular drug delivery lab aims to develop new chemical and biological tools for intracellular delivery studies, bridging fundamental research with translational applications in nanomedicine.
Shiqi starts as an Assistant Professor in Pharmaceutical Biotechnology on June 1, 2025, with primary affiliation at HiLIFE and secondary affiliation at the Faculty of Pharmacy.