Lea
Mikkola
Contact
Areas of expertise
Biography
I'm a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Single-cell Immunogenomics Research Group, Turku Bioscience, University of Turku, Finland (https://bioscience.fi/research/single-cell-genomics-immunology/profile/).
I'm the Principal Investigator of the project "Complex Molecular Etiology and Cellular Landscape of Hip Osteoarthritis (OASEQ)" (https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT05278520).
My fields of expertise are computational genomics, quantitative genetics, and single-cell and spatial transcriptomics. I do research both in bioinformatics and wet lab.
I have been awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship of the InFLAMES Research Flagship Center, University of Turku and Åbo Akademi in 2021, and a 3-year Postdoctoral Research Fellowship of Research Council of Finland (formerly Academy of Finland) in 2022.
Teaching
My main interests in teaching are bioinformatics and experimental design.
Teaching at the University of Turku:
-BIOL3050, "Bioinformatics for Biologists", first half of every spring semester since 2021.
-FYGE5430, "Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) and its Applications", second half of spring semester 2023.
Teaching at the University of Helsinki:
-Clinical Genetics (2020)
-Introduction to Research in Veterinary Medicine (2014, 2015, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023)
-Comparative Anatomy and Physiology (2014, 2015)
International teaching experience:
-Experimental design for high-throughput technologies, Karolinska Institutet (2022, 2023).
-Bioinformatics Analysis and Visualisation of Medical Genomics Data, University of Tokyo and Karolinska Institutet, Tokyo, Japan, March 2023 and March 2025; RIKEN Research Institute and Karolinska Institutet in Yokohama Japan October 2023, and in Stockholm Sweden in September 2024.
I have completed 10 ECTS of Medical pedagogy studies at the University of Turku in 2024.
Research
In my primary ongoing research project I explore the molecular etiology and cellular landscape of hip joint osteoarthritis (OA), especially focusing on the role of immune responses in OA.
In my other main project I have applied single-cell and spatial omics approaches to elucidate the role of immune responses in the development of atherosclerosis, aiming to identify novel targets for therapeutic interventions (manuscript, see https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.02.673686v1.full).
I'm collaborating in multiple other projects as a senior computational geneticist; designing, running and/or supervising the data analyses. These projects have been focusing on e.g. breast cancer, systemic lupus erythematosus, and stress/anxiety.