Quantitative understanding of evolution is a prerequisite to successfully combat pathogens, pests and loss of biodiversity. For instance, identifying genetic variants which contribute to the emergence of drug resistance, a question with importance for the treatment of pathogens, and of cancer, is a challenge of understanding the evolution of these populations.

Big Data provide new opportunities to study in detail how populations evolve. However, data alone, without theory and scalable algorithms to extract information from it, is not sufficient to make progress.

Ville Mustonen's group develops computational algorithms and theory to better understand evolution. The work is cross-disciplinary and we have a record of successful research collaborations working together with clinicians and experimentalists.

We work on methods development and their application in evolutionary sequence analysis. Our current research topics include population genetics, analysis of high-throughput sequencing data, and development of sequence alignment and visualization tools for evolutionary and comparative studies. 

Ville Mustonen, Professor
Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences &
Faculty of Science &
Institute of Biotechnology, HiLIFE

P.O 56 (Viikinkaari 9)
00014, University of Helsinki
Finland

Tel:  +358 2941 59602, +358 503116206
Email: v.mustonen@helsinki.fi 

Ville is a Principal Investigator/Group Leader at BI and Professor at the Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences and the Faculty of Science (Department of Computer Science & Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT).