Arne Raasakka

Arne Raasakka holds a PhD in Biochemistry from the Department of Biomedicine at UiB, where he currently works as a Postdoctoral Fellow. Before starting his PhD, he completed his MSc degree in Protein Science and Biotechnology at the Department of Biochemistry, University of Oulu in Finland. His career is based on the discipline of structural neurobiochemistry, with emphasis on the molecular foundation of myelin formation and stability, for which he carried out his PhD thesis work during 2015 – 2019 at UiB, and his MSc thesis work during 2011 – 2012 jointly at the University of Oulu and the German Electron Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg, Germany.

In his postdoctoral work, Arne continues to study disordered membrane-binding proteins of the nervous system, which have relevance in the formation of myelin and the etiology of demyelinating diseases, such as multiple sclerosis. Especially disease variants of such proteins are of high interest, and Arne aims to characterize their structure-function relationships using biophysical methodology that he established during his PhD project. Additionally, he plans to complement his studies using myelin-like cell model systems and state-of-the-art imaging techniques, like electron cryomicroscopy.