Professor of Cancer Biology at the University of Turku, InFLAMES Flagship Director Jukka Westermarck has been nominated as a member of the European Association for Cancer Research (EACR) executive board. EACR is Europe’s largest association promoting cancer research and has more than 10,000 members worldwide.

EACR’s mission is ” the advancement of cancer research for the public benefit: from basic research to prevention, treatment and care”. EACR coordinates cooperation within the cancer research community, for example by organizing high-quality scientific conferences.

EACR is also a significant advocacy organisation that actively strives to highlight the social importance of cancer research and to influence political decision-makers to improve the conditions for cancer research. In particular, EACR aims to improve the career opportunities of young cancer researchers both through political influence and the organisation’s own targeted measures.

EACR’s operations are guided by a 16-person board of directors, to which leading European cancer researchers are elected as representatives for a fixed period of time. At this year’s EACR annual meeting in Seville on 21 June, Jukka Westermarck, professor at the University of Turku and research director of Turku Bioscience Center, was unanimously elected as a member of EACR’s executive board.

Professor Westermarck is one of the leading researchers in his field of research in the world, and the research results of his working group have opened up a completely new understanding of how cancer cell activity is regulated from within the cells and how this affects the response of cancer cells to treatment.

Professor Westermarck was elected to the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters in 2017 and has served as a board member of the Academy since 2021. Westermarck has received several national and international recognitions and is a Commander of the Order of the Finnish Lion since 2020.

“EACR is an important international research community and I am very pleased to be able to represent both Finnish and Nordic cancer researchers on the board of the organisation. I hope that researchers in Finland will see my membership in the executive board first and foremost as an opportunity to influence the European cancer research field, and I encourage both researchers and influencers to feel free to contact me on issues that I could possibly promote through the EACR executive board for the common good,” says Westermarck.

Turun yliopiston professori Jukka Westermarck jäseneksi Euroopan syöpäjärjestöjen johtokuntaan