Jussi Paananen
Chief Technology Officer, Co-Founder at Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
Helsinki, Finland
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolJussi Paananen is a seasoned technology leader and serial founder with 15+ years of experience building and scaling AI-driven platforms for life sciences and healthcare. As CTO and co-founder he combines hands-on software and bioinformatics engineering with strategic R&D leadership, having led teams at Blueprint Genetics (acquired by Quest) and now building epigenomics and AI platforms at Switchpoint Bio. His background is uniquely interdisciplinary—a PhD in Molecular Medicine, an MSc in Computer Science, 80+ peer-reviewed publications, and a Fulbright stint at the Broad Institute—enabling him to translate cutting-edge genomics and single-cell methods into production-grade ML tools. He has shipped AI/ML solutions for genetic interpretation and drug target discovery, contributed backend improvements to the widely used Integrative Genomics Viewer (IGV), and scaled global bioinformatics and diagnostics platforms. Known as a pragmatic hacker and people-first leader, he frequently bridges US–Finland engineering cultures and advises multiple startups on tech and growth. A self-described bad-humorist, he pairs scientific rigor with product-focused execution to move complex biomedical software from prototype to impact.
15 years of coding experience
22 years of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Molecular Medicine, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Molecular Medicine at University of Eastern FinlandPuijon-Sarven yläaste
English, Finnish, Swedish
Github Skills (5)
bioinformatics10
javas10
genomics10
data-parsing10
java10
Programming languages (4)
Github contributions (5)
igvteam/igv
Jan 2011 - Feb 2011
Integrative Genomics Viewer. Fast, efficient, scalable visualization tool for genomics data and annotations
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:14 commits in 23 days
Contributions summary:Jussi primarily contributed to the development of the Integrative Genomics Viewer (IGV), focusing on enhancing its functionality related to genomic data visualization and analysis. Their work involved fixing test parameters, adding chromosome aliases to improve data interpretation, and implementing utility methods such as `splitSpaces` for parsing specific file formats. Moreover, the user introduced and refactored code related to GWAS features, including data parsing, description caching, and UI elements.
visualization
juuussi/RYQL
Sep 2012 - Oct 2016
Contributions:3 commits, 1 push, 1 comment in 4 years 1 month
Find and Hire Top DevelopersWe’ve analyzed the programming source code of over 60 million software developers on GitHub and scored them by 50,000 skills. Sign-up on Prog,AI to search for software developers.