Content: I will describe different efforts that our team is pursuing to translate results from genome-wide association studies into clinically and public-health relevant applications. The talk will touch upon the use of polygenic scores for disease prediction and their value for informing patient’s disease prognosis. I will discuss our recent work in mapping the impact of genetic risk factors on healthy life years (Jukarainen et al, Nature Medicine, 2022) and the use of genetics to understand the causal impact of modifiable risk factors on healthcare costs.

Bio: Andrea is a FIMM-EMBL group leader at Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM) and a research associate at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School. Andrea’s research interests lie at the intersection between epidemiology, genetics, and statistics. He leads a diverse group of 18 researchers including biologists, mathematicians, and medical doctors. He is a winner of an ERC starting grant and the Leena Peltonen Prize for Excellence in Human Genetics. He is co-leading two major international consortia: the COVID-19 host genetic initiative, the largest human genetic study of COVID-19, and the INTERVENE consortium, which aims to integrate AI and human genetics tools for disease prevention and diagnosis across biobanks in Europe. He has also initiated the FinRegistry project, one of the most comprehensive registry-based health studies in the world. His research vision is to integrate genetic data and electronic health records to enhance the early detection of common diseases and improve public health interventions.

Affiliations: Andrea is a FIMM-EMBL group leader at Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM) and a research associate at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School