Virpi Björkman
Project Manager
E-mail: virpi.bjorkman@ki.se
Telephone: +46852482495
Visiting address: Nobels väg 12a, 17165 Solna
Postal address: C8 Medicinsk epidemiologi och biostatistik, C8 Biobanken Kundrelationer, 171 77 Stockholm
About me
- I am a project manager and a national withdrawal coordinator for Biobank
Sweden. In my role as a coordinator, I am a single point of contact for
researchers and the receiving laboratory, and coordinate the withdrawal
process between biobanks. I help researchers to navigate the biobanking
system of liquid sample withdrawals. In addition, I lead a project group that
maintains and develops the national withdrawal processes. Our goal is to
identify and implement administrative solutions to make the process more time
and resource efficient for everyone involved.
I have been in research since 2004, the I started as a quality specialist for
the Finnish Genome centre. In 2005 I joined Leena Peltonen's MS research team
at Institute of Health and Welfare in Helsinki Finland and Institute for
Molecular medicine FIMM, where I later did my masters thesis and PhD with
focus on population specific genetic predisposition to MS. In 2013, I
continued for a postdoc at UCLA working with Dr. Daniel Geschwind on autism
genetics. Although I am passionate about research, I deeply disagree with
several parts of the way the academic system is built. Therefore, in 2017, I
started to work as a scientific project manager at Karolinska Institutet at
the Centre of Eating Disorders Innovation. During that time I had a good
viewpoint of the academic research infrastructure, regulatory requirements
and challenges with it, and in 2021 started to work in my current role
working for Biobank Sweden at the KI Biobank.
2013 - 2017, Postdoctoral scholar at Daniel H Geschwind lab [1], Semel
Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, University of California Los
Angeles, USA. I worked on projects in genetics of autism in multiplex
families, and underrpresented populations.
2013, Doctor of Philosophy, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki,
Finland. My thesis [2] was on the genetics of multiple sclerosis (MS) at
the Janna Saarela [3] and Leena Peltonen lab at the Institute for Molecular
Medicine Finland FIMM and National Institute for Health and Welfare,
Helsinki, Finland
2008, MSc (Genetics), Faculty of Biosciences, University of Helsinki,
Helsinki
[1] http://brainmapping.onair.cc/geschwind-lab/
[2] https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/37847
[3] https://www.fimm.fi/en/research/groups/saarela
Research
- *Publications*
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Leppä+V [1]
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Leppä+V
Articles
- Article: TRANSLATIONAL PSYCHIATRY. 2023;13(1):366
- Article: BIOLOGICAL PSYCHIATRY. 2022;91(3):313-327
- Article: ADDICTION BIOLOGY. 2021;26(1):e12880
- Article: BMC PSYCHIATRY. 2020;20(1):507
- Article: JOURNAL OF PSYCHOSOMATIC RESEARCH. 2019;126:109797
- Article: AMERICAN JOURNAL OF MEDICAL GENETICS, PART B: NEUROPSYCHIATRIC GENETICS. 2019;180(6):428-438
- Article: CELL. 2019;178(4):850-866.e26
- Article: NATURE GENETICS. 2019;51(8):1207-1214
- Journal article: FOCUS. 2019;17(1):66-72
- Article: CONTEMPORARY CLINICAL TRIALS. 2018;74:61-69
- Journal article: NATURE. 2018;560(7718):e30
- Article: SCIENCE. 2018;359(6376):693-697
- Article: NATURE. 2016;540(7633):423-427
- Article: AMERICAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN GENETICS. 2016;99(3):540-554
- Article: NATURE GENETICS. 2013;45(11):1353-1360
- Article: NATURE NEUROSCIENCE. 2013;16(9):1228-1237
- Article: NATURE GENETICS. 2013;45(6):670-675
- Article: NATURE. 2011;476(7359):214-219
- Article: PLOS ONE. 2011;6(4):e18813
- Article: GENES AND IMMUNITY. 2010;11(5):397-405
- Article: GENES AND IMMUNITY. 2010;11(2):142-154
- Article: AMERICAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN GENETICS. 2010;86(2):285-291
- Article: PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 2009;106(13):5264-5269
- Show more
All other publications
- Conference publication: EUROPEAN NEUROPSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY. 2022;63:E126
- Review: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EATING DISORDERS. 2018;51(7):593-607
- Preprint: BIORXIV. 2018
- Preprint: BIORXIV. 2017
- Conference publication: EUROPEAN NEUROPSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY. 2017;27:S313-S314
- Review: NATURE NEUROSCIENCE. 2016;19(11):1397-1407
- Preprint: BIORXIV. 2016
- Preprint: BIORXIV. 2016
- Conference publication: JOURNAL OF HEPATOLOGY. 2016;64:S642-S643
- Conference publication: JOURNAL OF CROHN'S AND COLITIS. 2016;10:S5-S7
- Letter: NATURE GENETICS. 2010;42(6):469-470
- Editorial comment: LANCET NEUROLOGY. 2008;7(7):567-569
Employments
- Project Manager, Department of Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, 2025-
- Project Manager, Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, 2017-2025