The research that we conduct in the IEB lab spans several disciplines including genomics, developmental and cell biology as well as evolutionary biology, and takes advantage of their respective cutting-edge technologies.
In the pursuit of our scientific goals, our objective is to co-create a respectful, collaborative, and supportive environment. We are fully committed to purposefully fostering inclusion and creating a lab and teaching environment that takes strength from the diversity of perspectives, experiences, characters, and identities.
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Claudius is an Associate Professor at the Helsinki Institute of Life Science (HiLIFE) and the Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences. He has a background in developmental genetics, genomics, and evolutionary biology. The
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Joana runs the lab and fish facility operations, and supports the group in its research work. Joana has a background in aquatic sciences and ecology, with experience in laboratory and fish facility management and research on fish health, parasitology and immunology. She is a Research Technician in the 'Integrative Evolutionary Biology' Group at the Helsinki Institute of Life Science (HiLIFE), where she coordinates laboratory and fish facility operations and supports the group’s research. Joana works on research laboratory operations and fish facility management.
Methods and skills: Fish husbandry and breeding | Aquarium and facility maintenance | Lab coordination
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Dimitri is a postdoctoral researcher in the 'Integrative Evolutionary Biology' Group at the Helsinki Institute of Life Science (HiLIFE). Dimitri's research goal is to describe the heterogeneity of pigment cell subtypes by combining different types of data. He has a background in bioinformatics, with a focus on single-cell omics. He completed his Ph.D. by studying cell fate events during human preimplantation development, and his first postdoctoral position looked at how neurodevelopmental disorders affect cell fate trajectories. At the IntEvoBio lab, Dimitri is developing a workflow combining cytometry and scRNA-seq. This multi-modal approach presents unique bioinformatic challenges, which occupy most of Dimitri's time.
Methods and skills: Single-cell RNA-seq and Bulk RNA-seq | Statistics and modeling | Software development
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Lily is a postdoctoral researcher in the 'Integrative Evolutionary Biology' Group at the Helsinki Institute of Life Science (HiLIFE). Lily is working on the evolution of coloration genes across the most species-rich clade of vertebrates: the teleost fishes. Lily's research interests concern the interplay between ecology, evolution, and development. Her previous work falls into two key themes: 1) development and evolution of the visual system in fishes and 2) the role of development in the diversification of vertebrates. During her PhD, she studied vision in coral reef and deep-sea fishes. Post-PhD, she extended her work on vision to the world’s longest-lived vertebrate, the Greenland shark, and conducted broader comparative genomics work across >500 species of ray-finned fishes. Her research on the developmental axis of diversification has mainly centered on African cichlid fishes, looking at the interaction between ecology and morphology, and the dynamics of gene expression over ontogeny. Currently, she uses comparative genomics and phylogenetic comparative methods to study the evolution of coloration in fishes. Despite being a tropical Australian, Lily's favorite thing about Finland is avantouinti (ice dipping)! Between saunas, of course...
Methods and skills: Comparative genomics | Single-cell RNA-seq and Bulk RNA-seq | Histology | Microscopy
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Liang is a postdoctoral researcher in the 'Integrative Evolutionary Biology' Group at the Helsinki Institute of Life Science (HiLIFE). He seeks to understand how developmental robustness is maintained despite genetic and environmental perturbations, as well as its underlying genetic basis. During his Ph.D., he focused on the genetic basis of broad transcriptomic and epigenomic diversification in the pituitary associated with freshwater adaptation in sticklebacks. He has also worked on the evolution of reproductive seasonality and climate-associated adaptation in sticklebacks, as well as larval color pattern formation in swallowtail butterflies. Currently, Liang is studying the developmental robustness of color pattern formation in cichlids.
Methods and skills: Population genetics | Single-cell RNA-seq and Bulk RNA-seq | CRISPR and transgenics | Single-cell ATAC-seq and bulk ATAC-seq
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Sumalata is a postdoctoral researcher in the 'Integrative Evolutionary Biology' Group at the Helsinki Institute of Life Science (HiLIFE). Sumalata is investigating the molecular mechanisms driving pigment cell and color pattern evolution in cichlid fishes. She has a background in molecular biology, biochemistry, single-cell omics, and spatial transcriptomics. During her Ph.D., she applied multi-omics approaches and microscopy to decipher the molecular basis of spider silk biology using the bridge spider (Larinioides sclopetarius) as a model organism. As a postdoctoral researcher in the IEB group, she investigates the evolutionary dynamics of color patterns in East African cichlid fishes. In her current project, she integrates single-cell RNA sequencing with high-throughput cell phenotyping to identify pigment cell types and uncover the genetic architecture underlying phenotypic variation.
Methods and skills: Single-cell RNA-seq and Bulk RNA-seq | Histology | Microscopy | Image analysis | Spectrophotometry
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Muktai is a PhD researcher in the 'Integrative Evolutionary Biology' Group at the Helsinki Institute of Life Science (HiLIFE), and a member of the MaCS doctoral programme. She wants to understand how species become sexually dimorphic. She has a background in bioinformatics, genomics and evolutionary biology. She has previously studied coloration as well as color vision in butterflies. She is interested in studying the evolution of sexual dimorphism. She is investigating the genetic basis and cellular mechanism that underlies sex-specific color change in sexually dimorphic cichlid species. Come summer, she likes to be in forests, to forage and hike.
Methods and skills: Spectrophotometry | Fish husbandry and breeding | Single-cell RNA-seq and Bulk RNA-seq | Image analysis
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Jan is a PhD researcher in the 'Integrative Evolutionary Biology' Group at the Helsinki Institute of Life Science (HiLIFE). Jan is studying color change behavior in cichlids, with a focus on developing and applying new methods to quantify rapid color change. Jan has a varied background in working with fish, including both some applied experience in fish farming and experience in basic research. In the past he researched fish behavior, development and evolution using both cichlids as well as other models. Jan is pursuing a degree in the ELOISA doctoral program, where he studies the dynamics of rapid color change in cichlids. His research focuses on the environmental stimuli that elicit these changes, the different melanic patterns involved, and variation within and between species. To investigate these processes, he develops methods for eliciting, recording, and quantifying color change at high resolution. Jan likes to be in and under the water, especially where there are colorful fish to be seen.
Methods and skills: Image analysis | Fish husbandry and breeding | Aquarium and facility maintenance | Software development | In situ hybridisation and immunostaining
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Emmi is a PhD researcher in the 'Integrative Evolutionary Biology' Group at the Helsinki Institute of Life Science (HiLIFE), and a member of the ELOISA doctoral programme. Emmi's work entails genomics and population genetics, and her expertise lies in the processing and analysis of whole-genome sequencing data. She has an MSc in genetics and molecular biology, and a BSc in biology. Before starting her PhD, Emmi was involved in studying the genetic basis of susceptibility to chronic stress. Currently, she works on the genetic and phenotypic effects of small population size in ringed seals, with a specific focus on the endangered Saimaa ringed seal. This entails studying the link between genetic and dental variation in ringed seals, and assessing the potential effects of deleterious genetic variation on fitness in Saimaa ringed seals. Outside work, her current obsessions include dancing, painting (sometimes badly), and listening to audiobooks while working out at the gym.
Methods and skills: Population genetics | Analysis of whole-genome sequencing data
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Anastasia is a research assistant in the 'Integrative Evolutionary Biology' Group at the Helsinki Institute of Life Science (HiLIFE), currently applying to the ELOISA doctoral programme. She uses information from genomes and transcriptomes to answer evolutionary questions, such as how species and sexes differentiate. Her background is in evolutionary biology and genomics. Previously, she has worked on the population genomics of grey seals, as well as fireflies, and has been involved in phylogenetic studies. Currently, she is interested in exploring how cellular and genomic mechanisms shape the evolution of sexual dimorphism in cichlids.
Methods and skills: Population genetics | Comparative genomics | Single-cell RNA-seq and Bulk RNA-seq
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Neža is a technical assistant in the 'Integrative Evolutionary Biology' Group at the Helsinki Institute of Life Science (HiLIFE). Neza is involved in the improvement of scRNA-sequencing workflow. She has graduated from the Master's in Genetics and Molecular Biosciences from the University of Helsinki. Her thesis work was focused on understanding the interaction between a possible new regulator and septin cytoskeleton. Now she is working on optimizing skin cell dissociation steps and trying to enrich the scRNA-sequencing sample preparation process for pigment cells with the integration of de novo protein design in collaboration with the Leonardo Almeida-Souza lab at the University of Helsinki. In her free time you can find her in nature, swimming or hiking around.
Methods and skills: Cell Biology | Microscopy | protein purification
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Associated Lab members with different main supervisors:
Ongoing master's theses:
Ongoing internships:
If you are curious about coloration, evolution, genomics, development and tropical fish, we would like to hear from you.
The positions funded by our grants are filled at the moment, but people here have arrived on funding of their own. The lab has hosted postdoctoral researchers on Marie Skłodowska-Curie and EMBO fellowships, doctoral researchers on funded University of Helsinki positions, and master's students on
Dates shift a little each year, so check the funder's own page, and please write at least three months before the deadline. Send
For more information about the research in the lab please have a look at our
Much of our work is done with other groups, in Finland and abroad.
Nestory P. Gabagambi and Athanasio H. Shechonge,
Akram Shaik | Nov 2024 — Jun 2026 | Intern, Master's thesis, University of Helsinki, Finland | Project title: Foundation model for identifying individual fish.
Arushi Arora | Feb 2025 — Jun 2026 | Intern, Master's thesis, University of Helsinki, Finland | Project title: Modelling pigmentation patterns in cichlids.
Anastasia Konstantopoulou | Sep 2025 — May 2026 | Master's thesis, University of Helsinki, Finland | Project title: Hybridisation between grey seal subspecies.
Olivia Dreilinger | Apr 2022 — Apr 2026 | Master's thesis, Doctoral researcher, University of Helsinki, Finland | Project title: Evo-devo of pigmentation and colour patterns.
Nikolas Lamprou | Apr 2025 — Feb 2026 | Master's thesis, University of Helsinki, Finland | Project title: Genetic architecture of the blotched phenotype.
Hannah Weller | Sep 2023 — Feb 2026 | Postdoctoral researcher, University of Helsinki, Finland | Project title: Phenotypic robustness across traits.
Oliver Andersson | Mar 2024 — Dec 2025 | Associated member, University of Helsinki, Finland | Project title: Doctoral research in the Donner lab.
Atro Riskumäki | Aug — Oct 2025 | Intern, University of Helsinki, Finland | Project title: Mathematical metrics of symmetry.
Nidal Karagic | Feb 2022 — Aug 2025 | Postdoctoral researcher, University of Helsinki, Finland | Project title: Genetics of a sex-linked colour polymorphism.
Mehrnaz Asadnejad | Jul 2024 — Aug 2025 | Master's thesis, University of Helsinki, Finland | Project title: Temperature and phenotypic robustness.
Julian Rebentisch | May — Aug 2025 | Intern (Erasmus), University of Helsinki, Finland | Project title: Sex determination in Malawi cichlids.
Anirban Ganguly | Feb — Jul 2025 | Intern, University of Helsinki, Finland | Project title: Fish facility maintenance.
Ina Satokangas | Jan — Jun 2025 | Postdoctoral researcher, University of Helsinki, Finland | Project title: Long-read assembly and comparative genomics.
Hennamari Kupari | Jun — Sep 2024 | Intern, University of Helsinki, Finland | Project title: Neuronal innervation during colour change.
João Lopes | Feb 2022 — Jul 2024 | Master's thesis, University of Helsinki, Finland | Project title: Heritability of vertical bar patterns.
Lucas Bogaert | Mar — Jun 2024 | Intern, University of Helsinki, Finland | Project title: Spectrophotometry of colour change.
Paolo Bottega | Apr 2022 — Dec 2023 | Intern, University of Helsinki, Finland | Project title: Identifying unknown cichlid pigments.
Marilena Kastriti | Jul — Aug 2023 | Postdoctoral researcher (EMBO visit), University of Helsinki, Finland | Project title: Sympathetic control of colour change.
Swethaa Natraj Gayathri | Mar — Aug 2023 | Intern, University of Helsinki, Finland | Project title: Gene expression and blotch formation.
Bethan Clark | Jun 2023 | Doctoral researcher (visiting), University of Helsinki, Finland | Project title: Comparative analysis of egg spot development.
Adrián Colino Barea | Mar — Jun 2023 | HiLIFE research trainee, University of Helsinki, Finland | Project title: Mate choice under different light conditions.
Charitini Pantagaki | Aug — Dec 2022 | Intern (Erasmus), University of Helsinki, Finland | Project title: High-impact mutations in coloration genes.
Thomas Stier | Jun — Aug 2022 | Intern (Erasmus), University of Helsinki, Finland | Project title: Localisation of agrp2 across Malawi species.
Alexandra Faur | Jun — Dec 2021 | Master's thesis (external, Iași), University of Helsinki, Finland | Project title: Genetic control of pigment cell diversity.