It was a great pleasure to have the opportunity to meet everyone again under one roof. We had talks from postdocs, PhD students and PIs and an active poster session! We also had a lot of fun competing in teams against each other in the CoE “Olympics” organised by Gautier!…
A huge thanks to the Vattulainen team for organising this workshop, giving us a glimpse into their world of biomolecular simulations and helping us understand the general workflow of computational research. The two day workshop consisted of understanding the possibilities and limitations of classical molecular dynamics simulations, performing simple analysis…
Last week we watched nervously as seven PhD student finalists from the University of Turku described their work to a lay audience using one slide, no animation in under three minutes in the three-minute thesis (3MT) competition! It was exciting stuff! Omkar from our Centre was selected to the next…
We’re thrilled to announce that Prof. Johanna Ivaska, Director of BarrierForce, has been awarded a highly competitive European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant (2024-2029)! This prestigious funding will support her groundbreaking project, BorderControl, which delves into how cancer interacts with the body’s natural borders. BorderControl will investigate how these biological…
We’re thrilled to announce that Sarah, from the Lappalainen group, has been awarded a prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) postdoctoral fellowship! This highly competitive program supports top researchers like Sarah in pursuing groundbreaking research. Sarah’s project, titled “The Role of LASP1 and PDLIM4 in Stress Fiber Dynamics and Mechanoresponsive Signaling”…
Time flies! We are already in our third year as a Center of Excellence (CoE), and to celebrate, we recently gathered at the historic Mustio Manor. We celebrated year 3 with science, new faces and Finnish flair in a unique setting! The Stable, a beautifully converted meeting space, provided a…
Welcome Bohra to the BarrierForce Centre! Bohra joined us in September 2023 to investigate actin dynamics in the endothelial barrier under the supervision of three PIs, combining the expertise from the Saharinen, Lappalainen and Vattulainen groups.
More than 50 of the centre’s researchers gathered together at this second annual meeting in the beautiful setting of the Helsinki University Zoological Station. The station is situated at the entrance of the Gulf of Finland in the northern Baltic Sea. While we mostly discussed cell biology in the context…
The Academy of Finland has selected a unit led by Johanna Ivaska as a new Centre of Excellence which studies cell mechanics in biological barriers. From the University of Turku, also Riikka Korja, Kaisa Matomäki and Teppo Hiltunen are members of the newly selected Centres of Excellence. The Academy of…