Besides the University of Helsinki, the Hospital District of Helsinki and Uusimaa (HUS) and the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL; formerly National Public Health Institute, KTL) were also involved in the establishment of FIMM and we continue to maintain a close partnership with them. Our Precision Medicine Grand Challenge programme was established in 2010 as a collaborative research effort initially between FIMM and the haematology department at the Helsinki University Central Hospital Comprehensive Cancer Center. Later this effort has expanded to other departments at HUS as well as to other hospitals in Finland and elsewhere. With THL, we have ongoing biobank infrastructure collaboration. Furthermore, many of our large-scale genetics initiatives either utilize the population cohorts that THL has collected or are done in collaboration with THL researchers and biobank experts.
The University of Helsinki is launching a new collaboration with the University of Edinburgh on PhD training. The aim of the cooperation is to promote, foster and support research collaboration in “Human Genomics” by providing highest quality PhD training to outstanding doctoral candidates from around the world. Selected candidates will have the opportunity to develop their skills in international collaboration and have access to additional facilities & different cultures, practices and environments. Candidates will affiliate with the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM), University of Helsinki, and will have a one year mobility period as a visiting researcher at the University of Edinburgh.
Many of our researchers have joint positions at FIMM and at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Boston. The Director of FIMM, Mark Daly, is also an institute member of the Broad Institute and co-director of the Program in Medical and Population Genetics. FIMM Research Director Aarno Palotie is a faculty member at the Center for Human Genome Research at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and an associate member at the Broad Institute. Due to these tight connections, our researchers focusing on analytical genetics work closely together and we organise regular remote and F2F meeting and possibilities for staff exchange.
Olli Kallioniemi, the Founding Director of FIMM, is the current Director of Science for Life -laboratory in Sweden. His groups at FIMM and SciLifeLab work in close collaboration.
Johan Lundin has a joint position as a Research Director at the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland, University of Helsinki and as Professor of Medical Technology at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm.
Professor Janna Saarela, who worked as the Head of the FIMM Technology Centre between 2009 - 2019 and acted as the Vice Director of FIMM since 2011 is currently the Director of the Centre for Molecular Medicine Norway (NCMM) in Oslo. She started in this position in January 2019. NCMM is the Norwegian node of the Nordic EMBL Partnership for Molecular Medicine. Janna Saarela has a part-time position as a FIMM Research Director and has several group members at FIMM.