Members

About me

Jaruri Hyttinen is full professor and head of BioMediTech unit at the Faculty of Medicine

and Health Technology, Tampere University. His research group Computational

Biophysics and Imaging Group https://research/tuni.fi/cbig develops novel computer simulations (in-silico)

on cellular biophysics and in-vitro based electrophysiology and 3D imaging methods

for future personalized medicine and tissue engineering. Previously he has been a

visiting researcher at University of Pennsylvania, University of Tasmania, Duke

University and as visiting professor at University of Wollongong 2017 and ETH

Zurich 2018.   

Responsibilities

Profesessor of Biomedical Eningeering, Head of Biomeditech unit, Head of Computational Biophysics and Imaging group CBIG https://research.tuni.fi/cbig  

Field of expertise

Biomedical Engineering, bioelectronics, bioelectric phenomena and signals, biophysics, computational modelling and biological/physiological system analysis, bio- and medical imaging, 

Research fields

Biomedical Engineering, bioimaging, computational biophysics, Body on Chip Technologies

About me

Postdoctoral research fellow working on non-invasive and label-free methods for analysis and quantification of cell culture structure and function. My special focus is on cardiac myocytes and their biomechanics. I have supervised different research projects and B.Sc/M.Sc. theses on these topics. Feel free to contact me about collaborations!  

Technical coordinator of the EU-funded SMASH-HCM project.

Subsitute project manager of the Business Finland funded L-Cell project.

Research topics

• Quantification of cardiomyocyte contractility using video methods
• Brightfield microscopy -based methods for structural and functional assessments using deep learning methods
• Light-activated cell culture surface topographies

Research unit

Computational Biophysics and Imaging Group

Research fields

• Signal processing
• Image processing
• In vitro electrical stimulation
• Machine learning

About me

Sweeta Akbari holds a Ph.D. in chemical engineering and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Technology, Tampere University in Finland. She specializes in multiple disciplines within chemical engineering, having completed her bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering technology at Jawzjan University in Afghanistan and her master's and Ph.D. at the University Malaysia Pahang (UMP), Malaysia.

Dr. Akbari's expertise spans a multidisciplinary research background, including 3D biomaterials, emulsion sciences, surfaces and interfaces, process optimization, functional and porous biomaterials, polymers, plant-based bioactive compounds, and composites among others. She has authored over 25 scientific articles and book chapters published in prestigious high-impact, peer-reviewed journals. She has presented her research at nearly 15 national and international conferences across Europe and Asia and has delivered more than 20 invited talks at national and international events globally, primarily focusing on the importance of STEM education, particularly for women and girls in underrepresented communities. Additionally, she has supervised and co-supervised several undergraduate students in her field of expertise. At Tampere University she is working at Computational Biophysics and Imaging Group (CBIG - Prof Hyttinen laboratory) and with Kellomäki Lab - Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering Group.

Dr. Akbari has received multiple gold and silver medals for her research projects in Malaysia. She has also earned several academic achievement awards and secured a highly prestigious and competitive research grant from The Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation in Finland in 2024.

Dr. Akbari is the chair and one of the organizers of the First International Conference of Scholars in STEM (1st ICS-STEM), scheduled for April 2–3, 2025. ICS-STEM 2025 is a virtual conference aimed at fostering knowledge exchange and collaboration among researchers worldwide, including those from well-established research institutions and those from underrepresented or resource-limited regions in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).

Beyond all these achievements and contributions, Dr. Akbari has served as the academic research advisor at the Ministry of Higher Education of Afghanistan.

Dr. Sweeta Akbari is the founder and CEO of Scholars in STEM, a volunteer part time based initiative, a non-profit, non-governmental organization based in Finland dedicated to empowering women and girls through STEM education, training, and professional development. She is deeply committed to advancing educational and research opportunities for all. Her dedication to this cause reflects her broader commitment to social justice, equal access to education, and professional development in STEM fields, particularly for women in underrepresented regions.

Responsibilities

Research: Synthesis and Characterization of Materials

Supervision: Bachelors and Masters' research projects 

Field of expertise

Expertise: 
 

3D biomaterials, emulsion sciences, surfaces and interfaces, process optimization, functional and porous biomaterials, several analytical techniques, polymers, bioactive compounds, and composites among others.

Research topics

• Synthesis of gold nanoparticle functionalized porous and elastic materials
• Synthesis and Characterization of PolyHIPE-Gellan Gum Material with Tunable Macroporosity for Tissue Engineering Applications
• PEGDA-Based PolyMIPE and Hyaluronic Acid Stabilized Gold Nanoparticles Composites for Bone Tissue Engineering
• Combination of hydrogel and polyHIPE materials for 3D cell culture
• Surface activity and emulsification properties of saponins as biosurfactants
• Fabrication and development of emulsion-templated porous materials for 3D cell culture
• Extraction and Optimization of Saponin and Phenolic Compounds of Fenugreek Seed
• LC-QTOF-MS analysis of phenolics and saponins extracted from Aloe vera leaves via microwave technology in optimal condition

Research unit

Faculty of Medicine and Health Technology, BioMediTech, Computational Biophysics and Imaging Group (CBIG) and Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering Group (BMTE)

Research fields

Chemical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering 

Responsibilities

I'm the responsible teacher in the following courses:

BBT.022​ Essentials of Anatomy and Physiology

BBT.029​ Biomedical Engineering Principles

BBT.OPN.011 Kandidaatintyö ja seminaari, biolääketieteen tekniikka​

BBT.HTI.506​ Measurements of Physiological Systems​

BBT.HTI.507​ Modelling of Physiological Systems​

Research topics

• Atrial fibrillation (AFib): cellular mechanisms causing and maintaining arrhythmias and contractile dysfunction
• The gender gap in heart disease: sex-dependent differences in cardiac disorders
• Electromechanical alterations in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM)
• Translation of hiPSC-based findings to human context.

Research unit

Computational Biophysics and Imaging Group

Research fields

• computational cardiology
• mathematical modelling
• systemsphysiology
• excitation-contraction coupling
• arrhythmias
• intracellular Ca2+ dynamics

Research career

• University Lecturer; Tampere University, FI; current position
• Visiting Researcher; IEPT, UKE, DE; 04-05/2018
• Postdoctoral Researcher; Tampere University, FI; --> 12/2020
• Postdoctoral Researcher; University of Eastern Finland, FI; --> 02/2018
• Visiting Researcher; UC Davis, USA; 10-11/2016
• Researcher Scientist (part-time); Fibrux Ltd (startup company), FI; 03-06/2015
• Researcher Scientist (full-time consulting); Stanford School of Medicine, USA; 01-03/2015
• Postdoctoral Fellow; Simula Research Laboratory, NO; --> 12/2014
• Visiting Researcher; KIT, Karlsruhe, DE; 01-02/2012
• Postdoctoral Researcher; University of Eastern Finland, FI; --> 07/2011
• Graduate Student; University of Oulu, FI; --> 12/2009

Responsibilities

OrganAnalytics — Viability Analysis of Organ Transplants R2B Project Team Leader

Research unit

Computational Biophysics and Imaging Group

About me

I am a biophysicist with background in signal processing and telecommunications. I completed my doctoral study in Tampere University of Technology in January 2016 with prof. Andre Ribeiro. Later, I worked as a postdoc with prof. Aleksandra Walczak (École Normale Supérieure) and prof. Nathalie Dostatni (Institut Curie) in Paris, France. In 2021, I returned to Finland to work in MET faculty as a postdoc researcher and from 2023 as the Research Council of Finland’s Research fellow.

I have always been fascinated by living organisms as dynamic systems, in which individual cells’ nonlinear convoluting behaviors are hidden in the population and steady-state statistics. Many behaviors, tailored over billions of years of evolution to ensure the organisms’ survival, operate either in equilibrium with their environments or at the physical limit. My research goal is to uncover these design principles in different organisms and cell types through the use of modeling and quantitative in vitro experiments. These principles can help redefine what “healthy” should be rather than metric means.

Research topics

My research has always been at the interface between theoreticians (myself included) and experimentalists, where we combine state-of-the-art tools of genetics, imaging, machine learning and computational modeling to achieve mechanistic understandings of biological phenomena. The central theme of my study is the balance between speed, accuracy and energy consumption in biological phenomena and how different cell types navigate within this balance to perform their respective functions.

Cell-to-cell communication via Calcium signaling cascades.

with Teemu Ihalainen, Soile Nymark, Arri Priimägi and Jari Hyttinen

Tightly connected epithelial tissues achieve complex behaviors largely by coordinating electrophysiological activities across individual cells through ion channels. These electrophysiological activities, with the most well-known being calcium signaling, determine cells’ immediate response to external stimuli by triggering transduction signaling pathways. Electrophysiological signals, despite the short time scale (from milliseconds to tens of minutes), are rarely static. Transduction signaling molecules such as calcium can also introduce latent but much longer-term changes in cells by affecting the Gene Regulatory Network (GRN), which operates at a much slower time scale (in hours or days). This can alter drastically, sometimes irreversibly, subsequent cellular behaviors by modulating protein subunits involved in the electrophysiological responses.

In this multidisciplinary spearhead, we aim to study the linkage between these two very different yet intertwining components and their roles in tissue behaviors. We will employ state-of-the-art measurement techniques, particularly in live imaging, to simultaneously apply stimulations to the tissues and capture the triggered calcium dynamics. The captured calcium responses to stimuli of different scales are then combined by integrating the principles of statistical biophysics and machine learning to characterize the trajectory of tissue behaviors over time. We first focus on epithelial cells, in particular Madin-Darby Canine Kidney and Retina Pigment Epithelium, as model tissues.

Gene expression in development

Postdoc project, with Aleksandra Walczak and Nathalie Dostatni

During my post-doctoral training, I studied the formation of gap genes’ expression patterns and its robustness in Drosophila melanogaster earlier embryogenesis. This concerns how cell identity, usually determined by the expression of specific genes, is established at the correct time and correct location in space to ensure the reproducibility of developmental patterns and the emergence of properly proportioned individuals despite their varying size and growth rate. The work is at the very interface between biology and physics, with the aim to explain quantitatively the mechanisms responsible for the pattern formation via means of modelling and explore/validate them via MS2-MCP RNA-tagging approach for live monitoring of transcription.

Dynamics of genetic circuits

Doctoral thesis with Andre Ribeiro

In genetic circuits, the constituent genes do not interact only between themselves but also with regulatory molecules of the host cells that support the circuits’ operation and by the environmental conditions. These factors, along with the intrinsic noise in gene expression, govern the functioning of the circuits. As such, to understand the structure of natural circuits and to engineer functional synthetic circuits, one needs to characterize thoroughly how external factors and perturbations from the environment may affect their behavior. In my doctoral studies, I focused on two major topics: (1) the dynamics of genetic circuits in specific contextual settings and (2) regulatory mechanisms of transcription in bacterium Escherichia coli.

About me

Doctoral researcher in Computational Biophysics and Imaging Group, with research focus in cardiac muscle (cardiomyocyte) computational modelling and simulation using MATLAB programming language. 

Research topics

Computational modelling of cardiomyocytes (heart muscle cells)

Research unit

Computational Biophysics and Imaging Group

Research fields

• Tissue engineering & biomaterials
• Computational biology
• Regulation & commercialisation of medical devices

Research career

• Doctoral researcher, simulation and modelling of cardiac muscle cell electrophysiology; Computational Biophysics and Imaging Group, Tampere University, 01/2025 →
• Master of Science (Tech.), Tissue Engineering and biomaterials (Computational biology & Regulation & commercialisation of medical devices); Tampere University, 05/2024
  • Exchange studies: Mahidol University International College, Thailand, Nakhon Pathom, Functional Histology and General Microbiology; Autumn 2022
• Bachelor of Science (Tech.), Biomedical Engineering (Biotechnology); Tampere University, 03/2020