Joël Tekoniemi

PhD Student (since 2024), Brodin Lab KI

MSc Engineering in Medical Biotechnology, KTH 2024

I'm studying the healthy human immune system and more specifically the regulation that takes place between immune cells via cytokine signalling. Cytokines are crucial signalling molecules that make immune cells function and respond to threats. It is by perturbing the cytokine environment and challenging the immune system using healthy donors that I believe we can understand more of the signalling network and cross-regulation that is taking place in the immune system. My work is centred on developing methods for high-throughput automated experiments, where machine learning is used to integrate a large quantity of low- and high-dimensional data in order to decipher cytokine cross-regulatory networks in different immune cell types. In the future, the aim is to apply these findings to help with diagnosis and precision treatment for patients suffering from autoimmune diseases or immune dysregulation.

As a student coming from an engineering background, my interest is in developing and applying new techniques and advanced machine learning tools to create models that help us understand the immune system better than before, all while expanding my knowledge in the medical field.

Stockholm iGEM (since 2023): In charge of supporting and coaching students in the Stockholm team who compete in the iGEM Synthetic Biology Competition