People

Noora Kotaja, PhD
Principal Investigator

Professor of Molecular Medicine

Director of Integrative Physiology and Pharmacology Unit at the Institute of Biomedicine

Juho-Antti Mäkelä, PhD
Docent, senior scientist

Project: Regulation and function of spermatogonial stem cells in the maintenance of male fertility and epigenetic inheritance.

Simang Champramary, PhD
Postdoc

Project: Developing bioinformatics and computational biology tools for the studies on male germline-specific transcriptome regulation.

Keshav Thapa, PhD
Postdoc

Project: Long-read RNA sequencing of the male germ cell-specific ribonucleoprotein granules.

Signe Isacson, PhD
Postdoc

Project: Function of sperm small non-coding RNAs in the intergenerational transmission of epigenetic information.

Ammar Ahmedani, MSc
PhD Researcher

Project: Germ granules and the mechanisms of RNA regulation during spermatogenesis.

Lin Ma, MSc
PhD Researcher

Project: Characterization of the role of germ granules in transcriptome regulation using bioinformatics tools.

Samuli Laasanen, MSc
PhD Researcher

Project: Regulation and functional roles of sperm non-coding RNAs.

Sini Laasanen, BM
PhD Researcher

Project: Germ cell-specific RNAs and RNA regulatory proteins as diagnostic tools

Ruben Aju George, MSc
PhD Researcher

Project: Interplay between RNA methylation and germ granule-mediated RNA regulation.

Riikka Palimo, BSc
MSc Student

Maiju Rantamäki, BSc
MSc Student

Eva Savulkina, BSc
MSc Student

Samu Kallio
Trainee

Co-supervised PhD Students in Other Departments:

ALUMNI (postdocs, PhD and MSc graduates):

  • Jasmin Lassila, MSc 2025
  • Alessia Di Pauli, visiting PhD student 2024
  • Elina Louramo, MSc 2024
  • Matthieu Bourgery, bioinformatician, 2020-2024
  • Olli Heikkinen, Medical Acvanced Studies thesis, 2024
  • Rauni Klami, MD, PhD 2024
  • Opeyemi Olotu, PhD 2023
  • Tiina Lehtiniemi, PhD 2023
  • Mari Lehti, postdoc, 2019-2022
  • Fatemeh Hajati, MSc 2022
  • Salli Kärnä, MSc 2021
  • Ram Prakash Yadav, PhD 2020
  • Matti Lahti, postdoc, 2017-2020
  • Elina Palonen, postdoc, 2018-2019
  • Margareeta Mäkelä, MSc 2020
  • Mari Lehti, PhD graduation 2016
  • Hanna Korhonen, PhD 2016
  • Freja Hartman, MSc 2016
  • Suvi Virtanen, MSc 2016
  • Matteo Da Ros, PhD 2015
  • Noora Hirvonen, MSc 2013
  • Karin Sostar, MSc 2013
  • Oliver Meikar, PhD 2013
  • Ram Prakash Yadav, MSc 2011