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Areas of expertise
Biography
I am a biochemist who turned into a bioinformatician during 1990's. I got an MSc in 1986 and Ph.Lic in 1989, both in biochemistry at the University of Helsinki. I did my PhD at the U of Tampere based on my research there from 2004 to 2012. I became a PhD student in 2012 and defended my thesis in 2013. I have worked at the U of Helsinki from 1985 to 1997; North Karelia Polytechnic from 1998 to 2001; U of Tampere 2001 to 2013, and U of Turku 2013 to present.
Teaching
I have developed and taught at least six different bioinformatics courses and taught several courses developed by others. My main specialities and greatest interest areas in teaching are research tools in molecular bioinformatics, in particular sequence analyses and comparisons, use of bioinformatics databases, and structural bioinformatics for work with protein 3D structures. My main teaching method is learning by doing, which means that all theoretical concepts are understood better when applied in the context of actual problem-solving and pursuit of understanding biomolecules and biological processes with the help of bioinformatics tools.
I have a been teaching at Finnish Universities for more than 30 years, and since 2001 I have developed on-line teaching in bioinformatics. Since 2006 I have been teaching in international master's degree programmes of bioinformatics, and more recently in wider MSc programmes which include bioinformatics as one specialization line.
On-line teaching is also a special interest of mine, from long before the pandemic times. At the U of Tampere I was part of a three-person team (Lehtiniemi-Tolvanen-Vihinen) who won the national award of on-line teaching of the Finnish Ministry of Education, in 2002.
The courses which I have been teaching in the current curriculum cycle include Bioinformatics Methods, Structural Bioinformatics, Algorithms in Bioinformatics, and Bioinformatics Project, in addition to thesis supervising and co-supervising, and being a member is various PhD thesis committees.
Research
My research topic is bioinformatics of carbonic anhydrases, focusing on genomics, molecular evolution and structural aspects, such as protein and glycoprotein modelling.