People

Noora Kotaja, PhD
Principal Investigator

Professor of Molecular Medicine

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

Chair of the research program TREMENDO at the BioCity Turku

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 Advanced Studies thesis, 2024
  • Rauni Klami, MD, PhD 2024
  • Opeyemi Olotu, PhD 2023
  • Tiina Lehtiniemi, PhD 2023
  • Helena Matilainen, Medical Advanced Studies thesis, 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 2016
  • Hanna Korhonen, PhD 2016
  • Freja Hartman, MSc 2016
  • Suvi Virtanen, MSc 2016
  • Matteo Da Ros, PhD 2015
  • Tiina Lehtiniemi, MSc 2014
  • Noora Hirvonen, MSc 2013
  • Karin Sostar, MSc 2013
  • Oliver Meikar, PhD 2013
  • Ram Prakash Yadav, MSc 2011