Ella & Georg Ehrnrooth Foundation Research Prize to Minerva’s Elina Ikonen
The leader of the Minerva research group focusing on membrane biology, Professor Elina Ikonen, has been awarded the Ella & Georg Ehrnrooth Foundation Research Prize, valued at €25,000. As the research group leader, Ikonen is broadly responsible for her group’s operations, everything from creating project ideas and securing funding, to coordinating the work.
Ikonen is delighted to receive the award:
– This is a wonderful recognition of the long-term work of our entire research group. This type of research is very much a team effort, with each member contributing their own expertise. The knowledge and skills of each individual complement each other.
Ikonen was recognized for her internationally significant research in the field of cholesterol and other lipids at the Ella & Georg Ehrnrooth Foundation’s 90th-anniversary celebration, held at the University of Helsinki on October 30, 2025. Foundation Chairman, Professor Henrik Meinander, presented the €25,000 prizes to a total of four scientists who have received both national and international recognition for their long-standing and significant scientific achievements. The Ella and Georg Ehrnrooth Foundation annually distributes over €3 million in grants to promote scientific research and literary activity.
Professor Elina Ikonen, MD, PhD, leads cell and tissue biology research at the University of Helsinki’s Faculty of Medicine and is particularly known for her significant breakthroughs in cholesterol research. She is also the director of the University of Helsinki’s Bioimaging Service Unit and a member of the Academy of Finland’s Centre of Excellence in Metabolic Integration. Her multidisciplinary work combines, among other things, lipid metabolism, cell membrane structure, and intracellular transport.
The objective of Ikonen’s research group, which operates under Minerva and consists of 13 researchers, is to determine how the most important membrane and storage fats, such as cholesterol and triacylglycerols, move within the intracellular environment and how their distribution between cellular compartments is regulated. In addition, the research group aims to determine how changes in this balance lead to human diseases and how such diseases could be detected and treated better than at present.
– The Ella & Georg Ehrnrooth Science Prize motivates us even more to continue our research in cell physiology and the mechanisms of metabolic diseases. Understanding these will help us create the treatments of tomorrow, Ikonen comments.
Minerva’s Recent Success Continues
By receiving the Ella & Georg Ehrnrooth Foundation Research Prize, Ikonen joins the group of Minerva’s researchers, who have recently achieved significant merit. In autumn 2024, we celebrated Professor Hannele Yki-Järvinen for receiving the Jacobæus Prize and earlier this year, her receiving the Matti Äyräpää Prize. Furthermore, Professor Dan Lindholm was also honored with the J.W. Runeberg Prize for his distinguished work in neurosciences in the spring of 2025.
