Dr. Anne Salonen is the director and principal investigator of the Human Microbiome Research Program at the Medical Faculty, University of Helsinki. Her research focuses on understanding how the intestinal and female reproductive track microbiota are shaped by various external and host factors, and how these interactions relate to human health. She is specifically interested in interactions between diet, intestinal microbiota and health where she conducted pioneering research on the microbiota-driven response stratification. Dr. Salonen is the principal investigator of the Finnish Health and Early Life Microbiota (HELMI) birth cohort that has resulted in numerous publications and scientifically important findings on the early life gut microbiome based on the over 10,000 phylogenetic and metagenomic microbiota profiles. The FIBRE-MATCH project leverages the HELMI cohort data on adult gut microbiota metagenomes in relation to dietary intakes and gastrointestinal symptoms. Research methodology in Salonen laboratory ranges from NGS and other omics technologies to culture-based microbiology of anaerobes, including application and development of bioinformatic tools for microbiome research. More on our group’s research at Microbes Inside webpage.
Dr. Antti Karkman is a university lecturer in microbial bioinformatics and principal investigator at the Department of Microbiology, University of Helsinki. His research group uses molecular biology and bioinformatic methods to study microbial communities in various environments with a special emphasis on antibiotic resistance genes and mobile genetic elements.