Andrea Ganna

PI · 🇫🇮 Helsinki · 🇮🇹 Milan

Andrea is an Associate Professor at FIMM and HiLIFE and a senior group leader at the Human Technopole. He is also Associate Faculty at the ELLIS Institute Finland and an ELLIS member. His research interests lie at the intersection between epidemiology, genetics and statistics. His research vision is to integrate genetic data and information from electronic health record/national health registries to enhance early detection of common diseases and enable more effective public health interventions. Andrea is the founder of Real World Genetics Oy.

Tatiana Cajuso

Senior Scientist (title of docent) · 🇫🇮 Helsinki

Tatiana Cajuso joins the lab as a Senior Researcher after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where she investigated the genetic mechanisms underlying colorectal cancer progression. Dr. Cajuso earned her Ph.D. from the University of Helsinki, specializing in colorectal cancer genetics and their associations with clinical and molecular features.Her research integrates multiomics approaches, advanced genomic technologies, and clinical data, with a strong focus on understanding disease predisposition and onset. Ultimately, her goal is to translate these insights into improved patient care and clinical outcomes.

Zhiyu Yang

Academy research fellow · 🇫🇮 Helsinki

Zhiyu is an academy research fellow who joined the lab for several years of postdoctoral training. She finished her PhD at Purdue University, USA and is now focusing on developing computational approaches to understand why patients with the same disease follow different clinical trajectories. Her research integrates statistical genetics, biostatistics, machine learning, national health registries, and multimodal biomedical data to identify genetic mechanisms that influence disease progression.

Zhijian Yang

Post-doc · 🇫🇮 Helsinki

Zhijian is a postdoctoral researcher in the DSGE lab at FIMM. He earned his PhD in statistical genetics from Sun Yat-sen University, China in 2024. His work focuses on developing statistical methods and analyzing genetic data, such as GWAS data and QTL data, to understand the genetic basis of human complex traits and diseases. During his PhD, he uncovered genetic insights into the coronavirus receptor ACE2 protein and identified potential proteins linked to various diseases and human behaviors. In the lab, he is exploring multi-omics data from the FinnGen cohort, focusing on 'extreme' individuals, to investigate the genetic mechanisms underlying psychiatric disorders.

Daniela Fusco

Post-doc · 🇫🇮 Helsinki

Daniela has a background in molecular biology and completed doctoral training in AI for Health and Life Sciences at the University of Turin (Italy). During her PhD, she worked with genomic data and brain morphological traits, integrating multiple statistical genetics approaches. At the DSGE Lab, her research focuses on integration of genomic and proteomic data to improve biomarker discovery and disease prediction.

Kristina Zguro

Post-doc · 🇫🇮 Helsinki

Kristina is a researcher in the Register Data and Sample Logistics Team at the FinnGen project, working on processing and harmonising registry data for FinnGen participants. She also collaborates with the ML4HEALTH team, where she works with Finnish population registry data for a range of research projects. With a PhD in Genetics, Oncology and Clinical Medicine from the University of Siena, Kristina focused on whole-exome sequencing analysis to identify novel genetic determinants of COVID-19 severity and investigate clinical variability in rare disease patients.  She then joined the DSGE Lab as a postdoctoral researcher, where her work moved to the intersection of human genetics and economics, investigating how genetic predispositions shape socioeconomic outcomes across working life using large-scale Finnish administrative registers.

Simone Rancati

Post-doc · 🇮🇹 Milan

Simone is a biomedical engineer with a PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Pavia (Italy). His research focuses on the development and application of artificial intelligence and machine learning methods in biomedicine, with particular emphasis on deep learning, foundation models, and predictive modeling. During his PhD and postdoctoral research, he worked with clinical time series, biomedical data, and viral genomics, developing computational approaches for disease prediction and biological sequence analysis. At the DSGE Lab, his research will focus on integrating large-scale longitudinal health records and genetic data using advanced AI methods to investigate disease trajectories, identify risk factors, and improve personalized disease prediction and prevention.

Hannah Klinkhammer

visiting Post-doc · 🇫🇮 Helsinki

Hannah is a postdoctoral researcher currently visiting on a DFG Walter Benjamin Fellowship. She holds a PhD from the University of Bonn (2025), where her research focused on advanced statistical learning methods for polygenic scores. Alongside her doctoral work, she contributed to interdisciplinary collaborations spanning human genetics, biomedicine, and psychology. During her stay at DSGE lab, she will focus on integrating multi-omics data and investigating protein-protein interactions.

Leena Viiri

Research coordinator (title of docent) · 🇫🇮 Helsinki

Leena is working on an exciting study that aims to understand the value of AI and genetic data in identifying individuals with abnormal lab values. Leena is a molecular biologist and she has worked as a post-doctoral researcher in the area of Cardiovascular disease both in Finland and in the UK. Previously, she worked at Tampere University in the center of Excellence Body-on-Chip project, where her work focused on developing a 3D in vitro liver model from human-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). Just before joining the DSGE lab, Leena worked at the Finnish Clinical Biobank Tampere as a service coordinator.

Kira Detrois

PhD candidate · 🇫🇮 Helsinki

Kira is currently doing her Master's in Life Science Informatics at the University of Helsinki with a focus on Biostatistics. She holds a bachelor's degree in Applied Computer Science from the University of Göttingen. Already at the start of her Bachelor's, she was interested in applying her skills to biomedical research. This interest was strengthened by her thesis at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen where she worked on connecting trans-eQTLs to complex diseases. She is particularly interested in improving health care and life quality through early and effective detection and intervention of diseases. At the DSGE Lab, she will be working on the INTERVENE project.

Matteo Ferro

PhD candidate · 🇫🇮 Helsinki

Matteo is a Biostatistics graduate from the University of Milano-Bicocca. He wrote his thesis entitled "Clustered Statin Adherence Trajectories:A Study on Disease Onset" working with the help of DSGE lab and using Finregistry's medication purchase datasets. His interests range from longitudinal and survival analysis to modern techniques like deep learning, all to be applied to real-world health data.

Hannah Terborg

PhD candidate · 🇫🇮 Helsinki

Hannah holds a master’s degree in Life Science Technologies from Aalto University and a bachelor’s degree in Cognitive Science from the University of Osnabrück. Before joining the DSGE lab, she had applied various computational methods, including machine learning, to neuroimaging data. As part of her PhD,​​ she will be utilizing transformer-based models for disease risk prediction. Hannah is co-advised with Tuomo Hartonen.

Jonas Burian

PhD candidate · 🇫🇮 Helsinki

Jonas holds a master’s degree in Machine Learning from Aalto University, where he completed his thesis work at the DSGE lab. He further developed his expertise at the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research and the German Cancer Research Center, working at the intersection of biomedical and machine learning techniques. His current research focuses on improving the transferability of multimodal AI for disease risk prediction. Jonas is co-advised with Tuomo Hartonen.

Chelsea Alvarado

PhD candidate · 🇫🇮 Helsinki

Chelsea is a doctoral researcher with a multidisciplinary background in psychology, biology, and data science. She holds a bachelor's degree in Psychology from Sweet Briar College and a master's in Data Science from the University of Virginia. She worked as a biomedical data scientist at the National Institute on Aging's Center for Alzheimer's and Related Dementias, where she contributed to omicSynth, published in the American Journal of Human Genetics in 2024, and at HHMI's Janelia Research Campus on the fruit fly connectome. Her research interests lie at the intersection of neurogenetics, deep learning, and health equity. Chelsea is co-advised with Tuomo Hartonen.

Maria Teresa Avella

PhD candidate · 🇮🇹 Milan

Maria Teresa is a psychiatrist with a background in omics sciences and research experience analysing metabolomics data related to psychosis. She joined the DSGELAB at Human Technopole as a PhD student, where she will work with nationwide clinical notes and the SUPER study.

Marta Bolognini

PhD student · 🇮🇹 Milan

Marta is a medical doctor who graduated from Vita-Salute San Raffaele University in Milan. Her MD thesis focused on longitudinal real-world hospital data and machine learning for clinical outcome prediction in internal medicine. She is joining the DSGELab at Human Technopole as a PhD student in Data Analytics and Decision Sciences at Politecnico di Milano, where she will investigate the use of large language models to improve disease prediction. Her broader research interests lie in leveraging longitudinal health data and AI to better understand patient trajectories and improve patient care.

Alexandre Crivellari

PhD student · 🇮🇹 Milan

Alexandre has a multidisciplinary background in public administration, healthcare management and data science. He holds a doubleMaster in Public Administration from Bocconi University and State University of New York, and later returned to university to earn a Master's degree in Data Science from the University of Milano-Bicocca, with a thesis on unsupervised representation learning of brain imaging in Parkinson's disease. Before joining the DSGELab, he spent nine years at Centro Medico Santagostino, a Milan-based outpatient healthcare network, in management roles and later as AI Strategy Lead. He is joining the DSGELab at Human Technopole as a PhD student in Data Analytics and Decision Sciences at Politecnico di Milano, where he will work on foundation models for administrative health data.

Akram Shaik

Data scientist · 🇫🇮 Helsinki

Akram holds a Master’s degree in Data Science from the University of Helsinki. His research interests focus on applying machine learning to research and exploring its potential to address complex scientific problems. As a Technical Assistant at the DSGE Lab, he works on the applications of machine learning in healthcare, focusing on embeddings from the nationwide foundation model.

Camilla Torriani

visiting PhD student · 🇫🇮 Helsinki

Camilla is a PhD candidate in Public Health and Lifestyle at the University of Pavia and holds an MSc in Biostatistics from the University of Milano-Bicocca. Her research combines biostatistics and epidemiology to analyze complex biomedical and real-world health data across translational research, infectious diseases, and forensic epidemiology. Her current work focuses on drug-related mortality, where she aims to develop rule-based and unsupervised approaches to improve and harmonize mortality classification frameworks. During her stay at DSGE lab and within the ML4Health framework, she will investigate the use of AI systems for biostatistical tasks, comparing AI-assisted and human-driven analytical workflows.

Sebastian May-Wilson - Postdoc

Tuomo Hartonen - Senior scientist, Team lead

Lisa Eick - PhD student

Andrea Corbetta - Visiting PhD student

Dhyey Sampat - Master Student

Rodos Rodosthenous - Research coordinator

Jakob german - Phd Student

Meihui Zhu - Bioinformatician

Maxim Lamoureux - Master Student

Mikael Lenander – Master Student

Feiyi Wang - PhD student

Chiara Caime – Visiting PhD student

Alexandra Prinz - MD-PhD candidate      

Tomoko Nakanishi - Post-doc 

Ville Pinto de Andrade Anapaz - Master student 

Mattia Cordioli - PhD student 

Yipeng Cheng - Visiting PhD student 

Ettore Brenna - Master student

Anna-Leena Vuorinen - Senior Scientist

Joanne Demmler - Data Manager

Giulia Brunelli - visiting PhD student

Matthias Kirchler - visiting PhD student

Aoxing Liu - Post-doc

Sölvi Rögnvaldsson - Master student

Antti Karvanen – research assistant

Andrius Vabalas – Post-doc

Sakari Jukarainen – Post-doc

Alexandra Prinz - Rotation MD-PhD student

Kristina Zguro - visiting PhD student

Sara Kuitunen ­– Software developer

Linzi Yu - visiting student

Jiwoo Lee ­– Bioinformatician

Yllza Zogjani – research assistant

Vincent Llorens - Software Developer

Mari Niemi - Post-doc

Sara Pigazzini - Research assistant

Mads Nordentoft - Epidemiologist

Timo Syvälahti, MD-PhD rotation student

Atte Fohr, Summer intern

Takao Shimizu, Visiting student

Joona Savela, Visiting summer student