University of Turku
The University of Turku (UTU, www.utu.fi) is an inspiring and international academic community of 25,000 students and staff. We build a sustainable future with multidisciplinary research, education, and collaboration. We educate creative and proactive future experts who will solve complex scientific questions and social issues. UTU has 8 faculties and 130 disciplines and has students from over 100 different countries. The University’s core values are creativity, openness, ethical principles, critical thinking and strong community. UTU is a founding partner of Auria Biobank, the first registered hospital biobank in Finland, and of the Finnish Biobank Cooperative – FINBB, offering centralised access to all public biobanks in Finland.
Tom Southerington
MSc (Tech), LLM Tom Southerington conducts research at UTU focusing especially on data protection issues in medical research, and practices law in fields related to biomedical research. He is the chief lawyer and data protection officer of the Finnish Biobank Cooperative – FINBB, member of the statutory regional medical research ethics committee of the wellbeing services county of Southwest Finland, member of the Scientific Committee of Auria Biobank, Turku, Finland, and member of the ministerial expert group providing guidelines under the Act on the Secondary Use of Health and Social Data, and other ministerial expert groups. He has lectured on biobanks and biomedical research to medical students and participated in preparing an online course on biobanking (by the Finnish Medical Society Duodecim).