Steering Committee members

Steering Committee is the highest decision-making body for FinnGen. The committee has a representative from the University of Helsinki, each biobank and each pharma partner.

Members of the FinnGen Steering Committee in Helsinki, 2023.

Members of the Steering Committee

Arctic Biobank: Minna Ruddock, Research Director, University of Oulu and Director of the Arctic Biobank

Auria Biobank: Lila Kallio, Director, Auria Biobank

Borealis Biobank: Jani Tikkanen, Chief Academic Officer, Oulu University Hospital

Central Finland Biobank: Jari Laukkanen, Cardiologist, Head of the Department, Central Finland Health Care District, KSSHP

Professor, University of Eastern Finland

Eastern Finland Biobank: Veli-Matti Kosma, Biobank Director, Eastern Finland Biobank, Professor, University of Eastern Finland

FinBB: Marco Hautalahti, CEO of Finnish Biobanks, FinBB

Finnish Red Cross Blood Service: Jukka Partanen, Research Director, Finnish Red Cross Blood Service

HUS: Taneli Raivio, Research Director, Professor, HUS

Tampere Biobank: Kati Kristiansson, Director of Research and Development, The Wellbeing Services County of Pirkanmaa

THL Biobank: Markus Perola, Research Professor, Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare

University of Helsinki: Tomi Mäkelä, Professor, Director, Finnish Cancer Center FICAN, Executive Officer, iCAN flagship, University of Helsinki

Abbvie: Bridget Riley-Gills, Principal Research Scientist

Astra Zeneca: Coralie Viollet, Director - Respiratory & Immunology (R&I) Genomics Therapy Area Lead

Biogen: Chia-Yen Chen, Genetic epidemiologist , Associate Scientific Director

BMS: Joe Maranville, Scientific Senior Director, Informatics and Predictive Sciences

Boehringer Ingelheim: George Okafo, Program Director, Global Computational Biology and Digital Sciences

Genentech: Mark McCarthy, Principal Fellow and Executive Director Human Genetics

GSK: Meg Ehm, Director of Genetics

Janssen Biotech: Dawn Waterworth, Senior Director

Maze Therapeutics: Karol Estrada, VP Translational Genomics

Merck: Simonne Longerich, Director, Early Discovery Genetics

Novartis: Chris O´Donnell, VP, Global Translational Medicine Head (Cardiovascular and Metabolism)

Pfizer: Anders Mälarstig, Senior Director

Sanofi: Katherine Klinger, Sr. Vice President Genetics and Genomics and Presidential Fellow

Other experts/ Non-voting members

Business Finland (formerly TEKES): Outi Tuovila

FinnGen in brief

FinnGen is a large public-private partnership aiming to collect and analyse genome and health data from 500,000 Finnish biobank participants. FinnGen aims on one hand to provide novel medically and therapeutically relevant insights but also construct a world-class resource that can be applied for future studies.

FinnGen is one of the very first personalized medicine projects at this scale and the public-private collaborative nature of the project is exceptional compared to many ongoing studies. FinnGen brings together Finnish universities, hospitals and hospital districts, THL, Blood Service, biobanks, FINBB and international pharmaceutical companies and hundreds of thousands of Finns. Because collaboration is the key to achieving breakthroughs in disease prevention, diagnosis, and treatment, we welcome everyone on this journey into our shared heritage.