Background
Ruohola-Baker was born in the small village of Kullaa, Finland in 1959.
biochemist university professor
Ruohola-Baker was born in the small village of Kullaa, Finland in 1959.
She received her bachelor"s and master"s degree from the University of Helsinki and received her Doctor of Philosophy in cell biology from Yale University in 1989, studying cellular transport and advised by Susan Ferro-Novick.
Her research focuses on the molecular biology of stem cells and on the use of Drosophila (fruit flies) as model organisms for human diseases. She then moved to a visiting fellowship at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and subsequently to a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco with Yuh Nung and Lily January
Ruohola-Baker began her faculty career at the University of Washington in 1993 and became a full professor in 2004. She held a Pew Scholars grant from 1996-2000.
Ruohola-Baker"s research focuses on stem cells and the molecular requirements for differentiation, with particular interest in the role of microRNA and in the relationship between metabolism and epigenetic changes in different types of stem cells.
The research group also has a long-standing interest in studying the Notch and S1P signaling pathway using Drosophila as models of human diseases, particularly Duchenne muscular dystrophy and cancer.