Samuli Ripatti, PhD, is the Director of the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM), a professor of Biometry at the Faculty of Medicine (UH) and a Scholar at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, MA, USA. He is also the director of the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in Complex Disease Genetics. His research group studies genetic variation in the Finnish population and its effects on common complex disease risks and management. His research focuses in particular on cardiometabolic diseases as models to learn about disease mechanisms and genomic strategies for diagnoses and prevention. He has published over 250 articles that have been cited over 26,000 times. He is also currently chairing Doctoral Programmes in Biomedicine and Population Health.
Johanna Aro works as a Project Manager, primarily coordinating research studies for Group Ripatti, including GeneRisk (KardioKompassi®) and Intervene breast cancer study. She holds an M.Sc. in Economics and also coordinates various development projects at FIMM, where she has been working for nearly 10 years.
Aki S. Havulinna, DSc (Tech.), Adjunct professor, is a Senior Researcher at the Ripatti group. Originally trained as a chemical engineer, he has worked as a statistician throughout his professional career. His work has focused on genetic and other risk factors and risk prediction of chronic diseases, especially cardiovascular diseases. At FIMM he co-leads the FinnGen clinical team, creating a vast range of disease endpoints based on nationwide health register data. He is currently a joint researcher at FIMM and at the National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) where he has worked as a statistician since 2004. He is now leading there a study group working with the FINRISK metagenomics project. He has published over 160 scientific articles which have been cited over 11000 times.
Rubina Tabassum is a Senior Researcher in Group Ripatti and a Docent of Public Health. Her scientific background is in genetic epidemiology, and she is currently leading genomics- and lipidomics- based research to facilitate translation of genetic discovery and information into clinically applicable predictive and preventive strategies to support health. Since 2023 Rubina has also worked as the FIMM Doctoral Training Coordinator, dividing her time between coordinating doctoral training and her research.
Fiona Hagenbeek is a postdoctoral researcher in Group Ripatti. She obtained her Ph.D. and completed her first postdoc at the Department of Biological Psychology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. During her PhD, she developed protocols for the collection of urine and buccal-cell samples in children and applied these protocols in a large cohort of twin children of the Netherlands Twin Register to obtain genome-wide SNP and DNA methylation data from the buccal cells and urinary metabolites from three targeted metabolomics platforms. With these datasets, she contributed to genetic, epigenetic, metabolomic, and multi-omic efforts to discover omics markers for aggression and related problem behaviors. In her current postdoc, she explores the gene-environment interplay of socioeconomic status and complex diseases and disorders.
Felix Vaura, MD, PhD, is a postdoctoral researcher in cardiovascular genetics. He focuses on analyzing the Finnish prescription medication purchase database to identify potential predictors of cardiovascular medication use trajectories, such as blood pressure medication switching. As part of FIMM’s international collaboration in the SafePolyMed project, he is building risk prediction tools for drug-drug-gene interactions. Felix received his BA in mathematics from the University of Cambridge in 2015, conducted his PhD at Turku Hypertension Center with Professor Teemu Niiranen and Professor Leo Lahti, and graduated as an MD, PhD from the University of Turku in 2023.
Max Tamlander is a doctoral researcher in the Doctoral Programme in Population Health, co-advised by Nina Mars, Elisabeth Widén, and Samuli Ripatti. His work focuses on the analysis and application of genomic data to better understand inherited susceptibility to common diseases, such as cardiometabolic diseases and common cancers. Max completed his MD at the University of Helsinki.
Eero Ala-Mutka is a doctoral researcher in group Ripatti. He earned his MD from the University of Helsinki and is currently part of the doctoral program for population health, supervised by Professor Ripatti and Professor Pia Mäkelä. In addition to his work at FIMM, Eero conducts research at THL. His current project focuses on understanding the genetics and mechanisms behind alcohol-related health burdens.
Mary Pat Reeve is a bioinformatician, and a doctoral researcher participating in the doctoral programme in population health. She has studied Biology and Computer Science in Massachusetts Institute of Technology and currently working in the group of Complex Disease Genetics as a Data Scientist.
Juulia Partanen is a postdoctoral researcher in Group Ripatti. She completed her MD at the University of Helsinki in 2017. Juulia also completed her doctoral thesis under the supervision of Professor Ripatti and Jukka Koskela for the Doctoral Programme in Population Health.
Susanna Rosas works as Senior Administrative Officer at FIMM. Her main task is to support Director Samuli Ripatti in FIMM’s administrative issues and as his personal assistant in various day-to-day matters. She also coordinates the admin team at FIMM. Susanna has been at FIMM since its beginning and on campus since 2004. She has studied political science and Nordic philology at the University of Helsinki.