Dr. Minna Poranen holds permanent Principal Investigator position (Senior University Lecturer) at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Her duties are to lead research and research infrastructure services, supervise and teach under- and postgraduate students, and contribute to the official bodies and committees of the University. With her team, she aims to understand the molecular mechanisms underlying virion self-assembly and maturation, genome replication, as well as host range evolution and alternative infection strategies of dsRNA viruses. She also utilizes dsRNA viruses as tools to produce high-quality dsRNA molecules for RNA interference applications in biomedicine and agriculture. She chairs the Cystoviridae study group of ICTV and is interested in the long-distance evolutionary relationships between RNA viruses.