Our team

Dr Harri Järveläinen, Chief Operating Officer, is a pharma industry veteran with a track record of more than 50 development programs – leading preclinical and clinical development, manufacturing, business development, fundraising, and project management. Over the past 20 years, he has held various progressively senior-level roles at large companies such as AstraZeneca, Nestlé, and Pharmaron. Harri Järveläinen has also actively and successfully built and operated several early-stage biotech companies, guiding them from inception to clinical milestones.

Kalle Manninen, Technical Scientist, holds an M.Sc. in Pharmacy from the University of Helsinki with a major in Biopharmacy. During his studies he was chosen to the researcher line in the Faculty of Pharmacy, so he has worked as a Research Assistant in several research projects, where most of his professional time was used on utilizing Surface plasmon resonance and Raman spectroscopy in characterization of extracellular vesicles and polymer brushes.

Philip Stanecki, Accounting Manager, holds an M.Sc in Economics and Business Administration (International Business) from Copenhagen Business School. Before joining the Valo Therapeutics team as an Accounting Manager, he worked as an accountant at a licensed accounting office, as well as an auditor at a Big 4 firm in Helsinki. He has been working with listed and large non-listed audit clients over the past few years from a broad range of industries.

Sandeep Kumar, Research Scientist II, holds a PhD degree in Biochemistry and his academic
research work was focused on drug discovery. He authored several research articles,
reviews and book chapters in peer reviewed journals. After graduation in 2019, he served as
an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry in veterinary research institute in India. In 2020, he
joined as a Research Scientist in Clinical Science department of Targovax, a clinical stage
immuno-oncology company. He was responsible for planning and execution of preclinical

Suvi Karumo, Laboratory Scientist, holds an M.Sc in Pharmacy from the University of Helsinki with a major in Biopharmacy. Before joining Valo Therapeutics as a Laboratory Scientist in Antigen Business Unit, she has worked as a Research Assistant and Project Researcher in Drug Delivery Group of the University of Helsinki.

Joseph Ndika, Senior Scientist, Antigen Analytics holds a PhD in Clinical Chemistry from Vrije University Medical Center, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Dr Ndika has over 14 years of experience using proteomics (mass spectrometry) and transcriptomics (next generation sequencing, microarrays) profiling of clinical samples to; study perturbation of biological pathways in rare genetic disorders, unravel allergic disease mechanisms and identify diagnostic biomarkers of adverse environmental exposures.

Otto Kari, VP & Head of Antigen Business Unit, holds a Ph.D. in Pharmacy from the University of Helsinki, Finland. He has over 15 years of experience in pharmaceutical research and development, with advanced qualifications in R&D and technology management. During his Ph.D. and post-doctoral studies, he developed and set up novel and innovative methods and infrastructure for the study of biocorona formation on nanotechnological drug delivery systems and viruses.

Lukasz Kuryk, VP Translational and Clinical Science, holds a PhD in biopharmaceutics/oncolytic virotherapy from University of Helsinki, Finland.

Hanne Cojoc, QA Manager/Technical Scientist, holds an M.Sc. (Tech) in Bioengineering from Tampere University, Finland. She has gained broad QA experience ranging from pharmaceutical development to healthcare technology. Hanne has also extensive experience in bio-technical laboratory work in both the clinical and pre-clinical settings.

Leena Ylösmäki, Director of Pre-clinical Development, has over 15 years of experience in the fields of basic and applied virology and cancer research. During her academic career, she has studied various different viruses including Influenza A, vaccinia and adenoviruses. Before joining Valo Therapeutics, Leena worked as a PhD researcher at the university of Helsinki where she designed and developed various oncolytic viruses for cancer immunotherapy.