Jukka-Pekka Onnela
Jukka-Pekka Onnela is a Professor of Biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Co-Director of the Health Data Science Program. Onnela is known for his pioneering research using cell phone data in network science. He was awarded the NIH Director's New Innovator Award in 2013 for his work in digital phenotyping.
Early life and education
Onnela was born in Oulu in 1976 and spent his youth in Kokkola. At age 16, he was awarded a national scholarship to attend the United World College of the Atlantic where he earned his International Baccalaureate. In 2002, he earned his M.Sc. in computational science from the Helsinki University of Technology and obtained his D.Sc. there in network science in 2006. His doctoral dissertation, titled Complex Networks in the Study of Financial and Social Systems, received dissertation of the year award from the university. He subsequently spent two years at the University of Oxford as a Junior Research Fellow, a year at the Harvard Kennedy School as a Fulbright Visiting Scholar, and two years as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard Medical School.In 2011, he joined the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University as an Assistant Professor of Biostatistics. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2017 and Professor in 2023. He directs the Onnela Lab which focuses on statistical network science and digital phenotyping.