Mikko is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Systems Biology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC) and serves as the principal scientist in charge of functional genomics at the Genome Engineering CoLab (GECO). His primary objective is the establishment of innovative genomics tools.

Mikko earned his PhD from the University of Helsinki, Finland, in 2017 under the mentorship of Dr. Jussi Taipale. During his doctoral studies, he investigated the functional effects of various high-frequency genetic defects on tumorigenesis across diverse tumor types using functional genomics methodologies.

Since his PhD, Mikko has been working in Andrea Califano's laboratory as a member of several multidisciplinary teams to overcome obstacles in functional genomics and cancer biology. Prior to becoming an Assistant Professor, Mikko has contributed to over 25 manuscripts in fields related to cancer biology and functional genomics.

Presently, Mikko is actively involved in developing a wide range of platforms for CRISPR-based tools, including knockout, interference, CROPSeq, and Perturb-seq. He also uses different proteomics, immunology, and lineage tracing-based tools to answer questions on cell type plasticity and drug resistance mechanisms