Key personnel and research focuses in the field of medical science in the University of Tartu
Faculty of Medicine of the University of Tartu has been the springboard for Estonian doctors and medical and pharmaceutical researchers since the founding of the alma mater.
University of Tartu medical researchers are acknowledged leads in their field—thanks to them University of Tartu is among the 1% of the world’s most influential research institutions in the field of clinical medicine.
Research activities in the Faculty of Medicine are organised into five focus areas below, which include a total of 30 medical specialities. Specific attention is paid to Translational research organised by the Centre of excellence for translational medicine.
1. Psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders (disease models, molecular genetics and clinical aspects of psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders).
2. Immune-inflammatory disorders (disease models, immunopathogenesis, molecular genetics and clinical aspects of diabetes, atherosclerosis, chronic inflammatory epithelial diseases).
3. Infections (neonates and paediatric infectious diseases, infections in immunocompromised persons, pharmacokinetics and –dynamics of antibiotics, wound infections and their treatment; wound infection models).
4. Infertility.
5. Public health and primary health care (communicable and non-communicable diseases epidemiology, personalised health, environmental and sustainable health).
6. Nanotechnological carriers and drug delivery systems for the treatment of various diseases
Eero Vasar is professor of physiology at the University of Tartu. He has been visiting scientist in Institute of Psychiatry (London, 1989), University of Uppsala (1992) and University of Helsinki (1995). He is currently head of Institute of biomedicine and translational medicine, University of Tartu. Moreover, he is chairmen of the scientific board of the Centre of excellence for translational medicine (2008-2015). Since 2010 he is a member of Estonian Academy of Sciences. He belongs to the evaluation committee of Estonian Research Council as expert in the field of health sciences and has served as evaluator for many granting agencies (U.K., France, Portugal, Finland, Bulgaria, FP7 and Horizon2020 of European Commission). He has supervised or consulted 44 Ph.D. thesis. He has published more than 300 scientific papers dedicated to the different fields of basic and clinical research and his h-index is 41 (Scopus). His major expertise is in the field of application of transgenic technology for study of basic mechanisms of neuropsychiatric disorders.
Mihkel Zilmer is a full professor of medial biochemistry at the University of Tartu. His research focuses on translational medicine studies to integrate biochemical-metabolomical and functional-structural profiling (CVD, neurodegeneration, endothelium functionnality, arterial stiffness) and to investigate the role of oxidative stress in neurodegeneration, essential hyper-tension, CVD and concerning new antioxidative peptides, probiotics and functional food. He has published more than 150 CC papers in several high-ranking medical journals (Eur Heart Journal, PLoS Genet, Int J Card, The Hypertension etc). He is an author of 10 patents (Estonia, Europe, USA, Japan, Russia etc). His papers has been cited more than 6400 times and his H-index is 43 (Scopus). His team worked at the Centre of Excellence for Translational Medicine Centre and at the Competence Centre (the scientific-innovation centre between Universities and Enterprises) in 2005…2015. He is a member of the evaluation committee of Estonian Research Council as expert in the field of health sciences and has served as evaluator for several granting agencies (Estonian Science Foundation, SA Archimedes, etc). He has supervised 40 PhD thesises. In 2009 he got the highest award of Estonian Republic in innovation and the highest quality-innovation award of Finland. In 1998 and 2013 he got the highest scientific award of Estonian Republic in the field of medicine. At present his team is a member of the Centre of Excellence for Genomics and Translational Medicine. He is on of authors of evidence-based book “Novel Nutrition Recommendations of Estonia (2016)“. His areas of competence are medical and clinical biochemistry, athero-sclerosis and neurodegenerative aspects concerning metabolomics, endothelium, arterial stiff-ness, inflammation and oxidative stress, probiotics, molecular aspects of new antioxidants, science-based human nutrition and diseases, functional food.