Heli Viljakainen

Heli Viljakainen is an Associate Professor at the University of Helsinki, leading the Folkhälsan Research Center and serving as a Visiting Researcher at HUS Children's and Adolescent Diseases. Her research focuses on multidisciplinary approaches to understanding childhood weight development.

• Education: Human Nutrition
• Expertise: Clinical Research, Omics Sciences, Nutritional Epidemiology

Research Interests: She investigates genetic and environmental risk factors for overweight in children, integrating computational genomics, nutritional epidemiology, and public health to identify early prevention strategies.

Scientific Outputs: Recent publications highlight her work on oral microbiome-diet interactions, mental health-weight associations, and perinatal influences on obesity. Collaborations span genetic epidemiology, vitamin D studies, and prevention research.

Supervision: She mentors doctoral candidates in projects like Fin-HIT cohort studies and dietary-salivary microbiome analyses. Active projects include longitudinal research on satiety responsiveness and obesity mechanisms.