I have dedicated my whole career on human health related research. This started already during my pre-graduate stage when I was working in Adjunct professor Jaana Lähdetie's research group at the Department of Medical Genetics (UTU) studying sperm aneuploidy of testicular cancer patients treated with radiotherapy. After my M.Sc., I familiarized with molecular genetics of hereditary diseases in children. In my doctoral dissertation I studied the molecular genetics of hereditary lysinuric protein intolerance (LPI) disease under the guidance Prof. emeritus of Pertti Aula at the Medical Genetics department. During this time I familiarized with various methods of human genomics and the so-called Finnish disease heritage.

During my post-doc studies, I moved to the Turku Centre for Biotechnology (UTU) to study the development of Type 1 diabetes as part of the Finnish DIPP study. During this time, I studied of Type 1 diabetes, molecular immunology and various genomic biomedical research methods such genome-wide microarrays. During the post-doc period I was a post-doctoral researcher of the Academy of Finland, the subject of the Molecular Markers of Type 1 diabetes, where biospecimens collected from DIPP children were analysed using various microarray platforms (in-house cDNA, Affymetrix and Illumina) in order to find genes or gene networks that change early in the course of Type 1 diabetes development.

The third phase of my research career began in 2009 as a senior researcher at the DIPP Research Clinic (Department of Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, TUH) led by Prof. emeritus Olli Simell. My research interest was to dissect and identify factors that modulate the risk for Type 1 diabetes related autoimmunity.

The fourth phase of my research career started in March 2015 as a senior researcher in The Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns Study (YFS) coordinated by Academy Professor Olli Raitakari at the Research Centre of Applied and Preventive Cardiovascular Medicine (UTU), where risk factors for cardiovascular and metabolic diseases are studied in great detail. The main aim of my current research is to dissect the complex interplay of human genome, transcriptome and metabolome with risk factors of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, both in cross-sectional and longitudinal settings, to increase our understanding of pathophysiology of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.