An external view of the Stockholm Uppsala life science cluster

Jan Ellenberg,

New Director of SciLifeLab

Jan Ellenberg is distinguished for many contributions to the cell biology and imaging field. The majority of these were made at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) where he is Senior Scientist and Head of the Cell Biology and Biophysics Unit. His major research contributions cover several aspects of the cell division cycle and nuclear organization, including systematic analysis of mitosis, nuclear pore complex structure and assembly, as well as chromatin organization and formation and segregation of mitotic and meiotic chromosomes. Since July 2024, Professor Ellenberg is appointed Director of SciLifeLab.

His goal has been to obtain structural and functional measures of the required molecular machinery inside cells using quantitative 4D imaging, single molecule spectroscopy, as well as light sheet and super-resolution microscopy, which his group is constantly developing and automating to address all molecular components comprehensively.

Sara Kangaspeska

Investment Director at Innovestor Life Science Fund

Sara Kangaspeska (PhD) is Investment Director at Innovestor Life Science Fund, a 90M€ Helsinki-based venture capital fund investing in life saving science.

Sara has a decade of experience in commercialization of research-based innovations to spin-outs and licensing, especially in biotech and molecular medicine.

After receiving her PhD from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory EMBL / University of Heidelberg, Sara work as a postdoc and academia-industry liaison at the Finnish Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland FIMM.

Before joining Innovestor, she was Head of Innovation at Helsinki Innovation Services, the commercialization company of University of Helsinki, and IPR Manager at Technical Research Centre of Finland VTT, where she was responsible for their broad chemistry and biotech IPR portfolio.

Sara is Board Member of Finnish Bioindustries and serves as a Board Member or Observer in several Innovestor portfolio companies.