Prof. Laura Airas MD, PhD
Professor, Clinical Neurosciences
InFLAMES Flagship
Professor of Neuroimmunology
University of Turku
Turku, Finland

Professor Laura Airas is a clinician-scientist based in Turku, Finland. She is an MS specialist who consults at the Turku University Hospital Neurology clinic, and performs research on progressive MS at Turku PET Centre. She has a special interest in elucidating the CNS pathology contributing to MS disease progression. Her research group uses a combination of advanced imaging, clinical phenotyping and soluble biomarker analysis to better understand the pathology leading to MS disability, with an overall aim to develop new efficient treatments for this undertreated condition. She also actively participates in randomized clinical trials for MS. Her group has developed novel TSPO-PET-based methodology to assess smoldering inflammation in MS brain. Funding for the group comes from the Finnish Academy, the US National MS Society, the Erkko foundation and industry. Additionally, she is currently leading a Progressive MS Alliance-funded consortium investigating aspects of smoldering inflammation. In 2015 Laura Airas received an international Grant for Multiple Sclerosis Innovation (GMSI) award, and in 2016-2017 she spent an academic year as a visiting professor at Yale University.