People

I was born in Brasília, Brazil. I graduated in Biology at the Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCar) and obtained my masters at the Universidade de São Paulo (USP).

For my PhD, I moved to the Flemish Institute of Biotechnology (VIB) in Antwerp, Belgium to study the cellular and biochemical effects of mutations in small heat shock proteins causing Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease.

After a short postdoc in Antwerp, I moved to the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK as an EMBO fellow to study endocytosis. My postdoctoral work revealed that the protein FCHSD2 is a major activator of actin polymerisation during Clathrin-Mediated Endocytosis (). I used cell biology, biochemistry and structural biology to reveal multiple aspects of the biology of this protein such as the structural details of its recruitment to endocytic sites, its molecular mechanism of actin polymerisation activation and its unique localisation at the base of clathrin coated pits.

In late 2019, I started my lab at the Helsinki Institute of Life Sciences () as an assistant professor in Cell Biology and in 2021, I became an Academy of Finland Research Fellow. Our research group is located at the Institute of Biotechnology, a leading Finnish research centre hosting  various groups studying biological processes from molecules to organisms. Importantly, we have access to many that enable us to tackle our research questions using various state-of-the-art techniques.

I still enjoy doing experiments and to be directly involved in most projects, when possible. I am the code-monkey of the group and I developed many of the image analysis pipelines used in the lab. Recently, I got involved in the designing of synthetic binders and to facilitate the usage of these tools, I developed a to pre-screen targets. 

Outside the lab I enjoy spending time with my two kids and lovely wife. I am also an enthusiast of woodwork. Building wood furniture is a great way to relax.

An-Sofie is from Belgium and as our lab manager, she is responsible for keeping everything running smoothly in the lab.

She is also our CRISPR/Cas9 expert. Before joining us, An-Sofie was the manager of the BRC hIPSC core facility in Cambridge, UK. There, she developed protocols for the efficient genetic engineering of stem cells. She applies her expertise in our lab to generate multiple knock in and knockout cell lines.

More recently, she has also spearheaded the development of a .

Laura is from Finland.  Her PhD work studied how endothelial cell growth factors and integrin adhesion molecules regulate vascular barriers.

Laura joined our lab in June 2020. Laura studies the relationship between reticular adhesions and the endocytic machinery. In our latest paper, she has made on this topic. Now, Laura is diving deep into the biology of these structures in cancer. 

In her free time Laura writes popularising science articles, learns to play the bass, dances ballet and walks her labrador Hilla.

Seyda is from Turkey. She joined our lab in October 2022.

For her PhD, Seyda is studying the role of a novel septin interacting protein in cell migration and cancer.

Neza is from Slovenia. She joined our lab in March 2024 for a HiLIFE internship and stayed for her master's thesis. 

Neza is combining her expertise in cell biology and biochemistry to develop technologies to enrich and culture pigment cells from Cichlid fish skin. 

This project is being done in collaboration with the lab of .

Alex is from Spain. He joined our lab in September 2025 in an internship which turned into Master's thesis.

Alex is studying the interactome of reticular adhesions. He will stay in the lab for a PhD from September 2026 onwards.

Aatu is from Finland. He joined our lab in August 2025 for an internship and he is now doing his Master's thesis.

Aatu is comparing the results of a large compound screen we performed with the results obtained using computational AI-tools.

Marta is from Spain. She joined our lab in Feb 2026 for an Erasmus Internship.

Marta is helping us to understand how post-translational modifications in integrin β5 regulate reticular adhesions.

Josua is from Austria. He joined our lab in the Autumn of 2024 as an Erasmus student and came back to Helsinki for his Master's degree and is currently on an internship in our lab since March 2026.

Josua is using his skills as an (now used for microscopy) to help us to visualize reticular adhesions in vivo.

Veera is in from Finland. She joined our lab in March 2026 for a short internship on machine learning.

Veera is using state-of-the-art image analysis tools to train models capable of measuring various cellular structures.

Are you interested in joining us?

We are always looking for enthusiastic people! Drop us a line to check for possibilities.