Group picture, November 2025

Anthony Mathelier, PhD – Associate Director, Group leader, Adjunct Professor II

anthony.mathelier@ncmbm.uio.no; @amathelier.bsky.social; @AMathelier

: (+47) 22 85 01 41; Mailing address: NCMM, P.O. Box 1137 Blindern, 0318 Oslo, Norway

Pubmed; Google scholar; Publons

CV

Anthony Mathelier is a computer scientist by background who completed his PhD under the supervision of Dr. Alessandra Carbone at the University Pierre and Marie Curie, Paris, France, in 2010. His PhD research aimed to develop computational tools to predict miRNAs in eukaryotes. As a postdoctoral fellow, he joined Dr. Wyeth Wasserman in 2011 at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. He became the deputy group leader in Dr. Wasserman’s lab in 2013. He focused on gene regulation at the transcriptional level during his postdoc. In particular, understanding how transcription factors (TFs) bind in a sequence-specific manner to the DNA and how the alteration of transcriptional regulation contributes to cancer. He has been the group leader of the Computational Biology & Gene Regulation team at the Centre for Molecular Medicine Norway (NCMM), part of the Nordic EMBL partnership, since May 2016 and the Associate Director of the NCMM since March 2023.

Roza Berhanu Lemma, PhD – Researcher

r.b.lemma@ncmbm.uio.no

Pubmed

Roza Berhanu Lemma completed her PhD in molecular biology from the Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo, under the supervision of Prof. Odd Stokke Gabrielsen in Dec. 2018. Her PhD thesis is entitled ‘Novel mechanisms controlling the interplay between SUMOylation, chromatin remodelling and transcription — A study of the functional interaction between the SUMO-protease SENP1, the chromatin remodeler CHD3 and the pioneer transcription factor c-Myb’. Although Roza is a molecular biologist by training, she developed an increasing interest in bioinformatics and computational biology. As a result, she joined the group in Jan. 2019. She is interested in transcriptional regulation and dysregulation, epigenetics, and their implications in cancer. Her current project is on the interplay between DNA methylation and TF-binding.

Damla Övek Baydar, PhD – Postdoctoral fellow

d.o.baydar@ncmbm.uio.no; @damlaovek

Damla completed her PhD in Computer Science & Engineering under the supervision of Prof. Attila Gursoy and Prof. Ozlem Keskin at Koç University in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2024. Her PhD thesis is entitled “Multiview Contrastive Autoencoder-Transformer Approach for Protein-Protein Interface Representation: Unveiling Biological and Functional Insights.” She has an MS in Computational Sciences & Engineering and a double BS in Molecular Biology & Genetics and Computer Engineering. She joined the group as a postdoctoral researcher in Sept. 2024. Her project focuses on developing deep learning models to characterize and predict transcription factor (TF) – DNA interactions and expand the JASPAR and UniBind databases with deep learning models.

Eirik Høye, PhD – Postdoctoral fellow

eirik.hoye@ncmbm.uio.no; @HyeEirik

Eirik completed his Ph.D. at the Oslo Institute for Cancer Research in the group of Prof. Kjersti Flatmark, where he worked on analyzing sequencing data to better understand colorectal cancer metastasis. His research included using TCRseq to evaluate immune responses in the METIMMOX randomized controlled trial, which assessed the efficacy of combining chemotherapy and immunotherapy and characterizing microRNA expression changes in colorectal cancer metastasis. He is now a postdoctoral researcher in Dr. Anthony Mathelier’s group, working in collaboration with Dr. Roza Berhanu Lemma on the downstream analysis of CRISPRi screening data to identify novel cis-regulatory regions whose inactivation promotes breast and prostate carcinogenesis, with the potential to develop new therapeutic interventions. The project is also co-supervised by Dr. Alfonso Urbanucci, who provides expertise on the molecular intricacies of prostate cancer development.

Ieva Rauluseviciute – Postdoctoral fellow

ievarau@ncmbm.uio.no; @ievarau

Ieva has a BSc in Genetics from Vilnius University, Lithuania and MSc in Molecular medicine from NTNU, Trondheim, Norway. Her MSc thesis, “Computational analysis of DNA methylation and gene expression patterns in prostate cancer,” focused on non-canonical DNA methylation and gene expression patterns. Ieva joined the lab in April 2020 as a PhD candidate to work on computational approaches to exploring transcription factor-DNA interactions, notably TF co-binding and the JASPAR database. Ieva started as a postdoctoral fellow in October 2024.

Paul-Arthur Meslin – Postdoctoral fellow

p.a.r.meslin@ncmbm.uio.no @paul-arthurmeslin.bsky.social

Paul-Arthur earned his BSc in Biological Sciences and an MSc in Bioinformatics and Statistical Modeling from the University of Rouen Normandy, France. His master’s project involved developing a reproducible pipeline for the analysis of shRNA and CRISPR functional screening data. He is completing his Ph.D. at Paris Cité University in Dr. Camille Lobry’s lab, where his research focuses on predicting treatment response in acute myeloid leukemia using single-cell data and optimal transport theory. He joined our group in July 2025 to investigate the molecular mechanisms that determine epigenetic fate during adipogenesis, a project in collaboration with Pierre Chymkowitch’s team.

Katalin Ferenc – PhD student

k.t.ferenc@ncmm.uio.no

Kata has a BSc in Biology from the Eotvos Lorand University of Budapest (Hungary) and a MSc in Biomedicine from Karolinska Institute (Sweden). Her thesis was titled “Investigating the intersection of double-strand breaks and mutational processes in ovarian cancer”. To gain a deeper understanding of data analysis methods, she completed a MSc in Applied Data Science from the University of Gothenburg (Sweden). Her second thesis was titled “Computational analysis and data mining of drug-induced transcriptional changes”, focusing on building a toxicity prediction model and exploring the scope of the DRUG-seq method. Kata joined the lab in August 2021 as a PhD candidate to follow her original interest in cancer genetics and epigenetics.

Dina Aronsen – PhD student

d.r.aronsen@ncmm.uio.no; @dina_aronsen

Alumni

• Vipin Kumar – Postdoctoral fellow (2020-2025), then Senior Engineer, Department of Core Facilities, Oslo University Hospital, and High-throughput screening facilily, NCMBM, UiO
• Lorenzo Martini – visiting PhD student (2024) from the SMILIES group, Politecnico di Torino, Torin, Italy
• Rafael Riudavets Puig – PhD student (2019-2023), then postdoctoral fellow in Vessela Kristensen’s group, Oslo University Hospital
• Paul Boddie – Software developer (2020-2022)
• Jaime Castro Mondragon – Postdoctoral fellow (2017-2022), then senior bioinformatician at Nykode Therapeutics, Oslo, Norway
• Aziz Khan – Postdoctoral fellow (2016-2019), then research scientist in Christina Curtis’ lab, Stanford Cancer Institute, Stanford University, USA
• Marius Gheorghe – PhD student (2016-2019), then senior bioinformatician at NEC OncoImmunity, Oslo, Norway
• Solveig Klokkerud – Master student (2019-2020), then engineer at the Institute for Cancer Research, Oslo, Norway.
• Timothée Launay – Master student (2020), then continued his Master’s studies.
• Kübra Altinel – Master student (2017-2018), then PhD student at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
• Arnaud Stigliani – visiting PhD student (2017) from the CEA, Grenoble, France.
• Victor Laigle – Master student (2017), then continued his Master studies.
• Eleftherios Pavlos – Master student (2016-2017)