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 borders can be harnessed to…

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” (Project acronym: LIM-it), will delve…

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 perfect backdrop for informal discussions…

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 of barriers and got up…

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 Finland has selected new Centres…