Professor Minna Kaikkonen

Minna Kaikkonen-Määttä is Professor of Cardiovascular Genomics and Director of the A.I. Virtanen Institute at the University of Eastern Finland, where she also leads the Single Cell Genomics Core. She earned her PhD in Molecular Medicine in 2008 and completed postdoctoral research at UC San Diego (2009–2012), supported by a Leducq Foundation Young Investigator Award. Since founding her lab in 2015, she has led innovative research into the gene and cellular mechanisms of atherosclerosis and cardiometabolic diseases using next-gen sequencing, single-cell transcriptomics, epigenomics, and functional genomics. She serves as President of the Finnish Society of Atherosclerosis and is active in several organizations including the ESC Working Group on Atherosclerosis and Vascular Biology, the Scandinavian Society of Atherosclerosis, and the Membership Engagement Committee of the American Society of Human Genetics.