People

I have MD, PhD background and I work as a professor of forensic medicine in the  at the University of Helsinki, and as a senior medical examiner in the at the Finnish Institute of Health and Welfare. My research interests are archeaovirology, population genetics, forensic genetics, paleopathology, and ancient biomolecules and forensic medicine at large.

“Palon Jukka, pientutkija yliopistolta, nykyään THL:n mannekiini”

I come from the world of wildlife population genetics. However, soon after my PhD I turned to the dark side of the force and joined the ranks of forensic medicine. Currently I have a dual role involving forensic genetic casework (Research Manager, National Institute for Health and Welfare THL) and research (SajaLab, UoH). Human identification, especially the identification of Finnish WW2 soldiers, is my main interest at THL. I am widely interested in science and find studies elucidating the history of (human) populations particularly interesting.

I am an Academy Research Fellow investigating virus epidemiology and evolution as well as human genomics for identification and characterization of modern and ancient human populations. Understanding the world around us and providing knowledge, especially on viruses – creatures not even considered alive, yet with great impact on the whole world – is what motivates me most as a scientist.

In my Research Council of Finland -funded project Virus fingerprint for human identification (ViFi-ID) we aim to produce a completely new method for human identification via virus fingerprint, a unique viral genome collection, residing in our organs.

I am an evolutionary geneticist with an interest in using DNA of ancient and modern organisms to study different evolutionary questions. My research interests include temperature selection on the mitochondrial genome and evolution of persistent human viruses.

I am a post-doctoral researcher studying the genomic variation of ancient Peruvians from the Chachapoyas region and the southern Pacific coast as well as the pathogens that reside in different organic tissues. My topics of interest include human population diversity and mobility, pathogens evolution and the mechanisms that facilitated/prevented disease transmission in different environments.

I am a paleogeneticist investigating human population history and adaptation to toxic environments and infectious diseases using ancient DNA and functional genomics. My current work focuses on the genomic history of Levänluhta (Finland) and the genetic mechanisms underlying human metal tolerance in ancient populations from Chile and Peru.

I am a MSc student in Translational Medicine and work as a research assistant in a Virus phylogeography project.

I am a Translational Medicine master’s student and intern at this group. My project consists of phylogenetic analyses of viruses detected in ancient Ruukki (North-West Finland) samples.

I work as a Laboratory Technician for this research group. I operate the daily functions of the lab, be it sample preparation, maintenance or inventory handling.

I work as a part time IT technician in this research group.