Olli Kallioniemi is Research Director at the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM), part of HiLIFE at the University of Helsinki. He received his MD (1985) and PhD (1988) and specialty in Clinical Chemistry (1990) from the University of Tampere. He then spent 11 years in the United States as a postdoctoral fellow (UCSF) and tenure-track investigator and was tenured at the NHGRI/NIH in 2001. From 2007 to 2015, he served as the founding director of FIMM in Helsinki. He was then recruited to Sweden to direct the Science for Life Laboratory (SciLifeLab), Sweden’s national infrastructure for life science research (2015–2024) as well as nominated to a professorship in molecular precision medicine at the Karolinska Institutet. He also acted as the Founding Director of the national 3.3 Billion SEK SciLifeLab-KAW Data-Driven Life Science (DDLS) program, His return to Finland in 2025 has been supported by the BrainGain grant from the Sigrid Jusélius Foundation, the Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation, and the Finnish Medical Foundation. His research focuses on AI- and data-driven precision medicine, particularly in acute myeloid leukemia and prostate cancer, and he co-leads a national initiative to plan the future of Finnish health data space and its utilization. Kallioniemi has authored over 420 publications, about 20 patents, supervised 27 doctoral theses and over 30 postdocs. He is the recipient of several national and international awards, such as Anders Jahre Young Investigator, Äyräpää prize (Finnish Medical Foundation), AACR team science awards, Biomedicum medal and several others. He is a member of EMBO, the European Academy of Cancer Sciences, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet.
Vilja Pietiäinen is a senior scientist and a team leader of personalized urological tumor project (DEDUCER) and ERAPerMed -funded
Astrid Murumägi is a senior scientist at the Kallioniemi group. She received her PhD in Molecular Immunology at the University of Tampere. During her postdoctoral training she transitioned to systems biology and genomics by joining Prof. Olli Kallioniemi´s team at FIMM in 2009. Her work is focused on applying systems medicine in cancer research. She is involved in the FIMM Grand Challenge on Individualized Systems Medicine program. More specifically, she is responsible for ovarian cancer and melanoma functional precision medicine projects, where patient-derived cancer cells are used for comprehensive drug sensitivity testing and molecular profiling to identify best treatment strategies for patients. In addition she is involved in several collaboration projects where the drug testing platform has been applied to uncover novel drug vulnerabilities in cancer cells.
Teijo Pellinen is a senior scientist and a team leader of the Molecular Spatial Pathology. He has worked in the Kallioniemi group since 2011. Pellinen has set up the FIMM multiplexed IHC (mIHC) technology, which has also been implemented as a service in the FIMM Digital Microscopy and Molecular Pathology unit, which is part of the HiLife core facilities. He is currently focusing in understanding the biology of tumour-stroma interactions and profiling of stroma-associated markers for risk and therapy stratification.
Sara Kuusela is a postdoctoral researcher in the Kallioniemi group, with a M.Sc. in biochemistry and a Ph.D. in biomedicine from the University of Helsinki. In early 2022, she made a transition from translational metabolism research to translational cancer research. Currently, Sara is working in the
Currently her work focuses to utilizing phenotypic image-based characterization and functional ex vivo drug sensitivity and resistance testing (DSRT) of patient-derived cancer cells (PDCs) to identify treatment opportunities for pediatric solid malignancies through comprehensive molecular understanding of the tumors. Her research also aims to develop a functional precision medicine pipeline, combined with multimodal molecular characterization and AI-assisted data integration, to investigate and improve therapeutic approaches for patients with pediatric solid tumors.
Romika Kumari is a postdoctoral researcher in the Kallioniemi/Vilja Pietiäinen group. She completed her PhD at University College Cork, Ireland, where she investigated the role of secondary structures in protein translation using ribosome profiling. She subsequently worked with the Translational Research and Personalized Medicine Group at FIMM, where her research focused on identifying biomarkers associated with drug sensitivity and resistance in hematological malignancies.
Her current research focuses on identifying prognostic and predictive biomarkers associated with drug response and disease progression across multiple malignancies, including clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC), adult Wilms tumor, and pediatric solid tumors. As part of the Finnish Digital Cancer Precision Medicine Flagship iCAN, she contributes to the development of the Integrative Molecular Tumor Board (iMTB), translating molecular data into actionable clinical insights to advance precision oncology.
Tamara J. Luck joined the group as a postdoc and computational biologist in the spring of 2022. She previously completed her PhD in Molecular Medicine at Ulm University, Germany, developing new tools for the study of acute myeloid leukemia using different genomic and transcriptomic sequencing data (github.com/tjblaette). She also completed a first postdoc at the CRUK Beatson Institute for Cancer Research in Glasgow, UK, studying patterns of synonymous mutation and codon usage shared across different tumor types. In our group, she continues to work towards the effective integration of the complex and high-dimensional data that is obtained from the extensive cancer sample profiling performed within iCAN and our urological and pediatric precision medicine projects.
Mariliina Arjama is a laboratory coordinator at the Kallioniemi group. She received her M.Sc. in Microbiology and biotechnology at the University of Helsinki. She joined Prof. Olli Kallioniemi´ s team at FIMM in 2011. Optimizing cancer therapy based drug sensitivity testing and deep molecular profiling, especially for ovarian cancer and melanoma functional precision medicine projects. Bringing new drugs to cancer patients in a personalized way.
Involved in various single-cell related shenanigans. Recent focus in single-cell transcriptomics and morphology based cell recognition/isolation; utilizing high-content screening microscopy, image analysis, machine learning and laser microdissection microscopy.
Katja Välimäki is a laboratory coordinator in the Kallioniemi group at FIMM, where she has worked since 2010. She holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Biotechnology and specializes in multiplex immunohistochemistry, tissue imaging, and image analysis. A substantial part of her work involves analyzing microscopy data for the group and collaborative research projects. She works closely with FIMM’s Digital Microscopy and Molecular Pathology Unit.
Michaela Feodoroff is a PhD student at the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM). Her research focuses on discovering novel, enhanced immunotherapeutic treatments for urological solid tumors. She is currently focusing on immune system-mediated control of tumor growth and disease progression through the development of a testing pipeline. 3D tumor models, drug sensitivity and resistance testing (DSRT) and oncolytic viruses hold the focus of her research in precision and translational cancer medicine.
Assel is a doctoral researcher in Kallioniemi lab/Pellinen team as part of the FIMM-EMBL International PhD program. Her work focuses on spatial profiling of tumor microenvironment in advanced colorectal cancer using multiplexed immunofluorescence, with the goal to find predictive biomarkers of treatment response in RAXO clinical trial.
Erika Romppanen is a Coordinator at the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM), University of Helsinki, working within the Precision Systems Medicine group and the Data and AI-Driven Molecular Medicine (DAIMM) research initiative.
She holds an M.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering (2025) and a B.Sc. in Computer Science (2023), both from Aalto University. She conducted her master's thesis research in Hanna Ollila's group at FIMM, focusing on identifying genetic risk factors using large-scale genomic data.
Her current work focuses on interdisciplinary collaboration and the development and application of AI-assisted tools and computational workflows. She is particularly interested in exploring how artificial intelligence can support biomedical research and precision medicine.
Molecular Spatial Pathology
Molecular Spatial Pathology
Molecular Spatial Pathology