Our Team
We are a multidisciplinary team of analytical chemists, biochemists, and clinicians united by a shared goal: making metabolomics and lipidomics work in practice, both in research and in patient care.
Katja Benedikte Prestø Elgstøen
Group Leader, PhD
Katja leads the Section for Metabolomics & Lipidomics at Oslo University Hospital and the Core Facility at the University of Oslo. She holds a PhD in Medical Chemistry and has worked at OUS since 1997. She is also Head of Development at the National Laboratory for Advanced Laboratory Diagnosis of Inborn Errors of Metabolism.
Helge Rootwelt
Chief Consultant, MD, PhD
Helge is a physician-scientist with a long-standing interest in inborn errors of metabolism, metabolomics, and clinical lipidomics. His research focuses on using LC-MS platforms to deliver more precise diagnoses, guide treatment selection, and support personalised medicine.
Mazyar Yazdani
Senior Scientist, PhD
Mazyar holds a PhD in Integrative Biology from the University of Oslo. His research applies metabolomics and lipidomics to clinical questions across multiple disease areas, with particular focus on ocular surface disease and dry eye.
Hanne Bendiksen Skogvold
Senior Engineer, PhD
Hanne specialises in analytical method development and the application of metabolomics in clinical diagnostics. She completed her PhD in Engineering Science at Oslo Metropolitan University in 2024, and has been key to the group’s LC-Orbitrap MS platform development.
Elise Sandås Sand
Senior Engineer, MSc
Elise holds an MSc in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Oslo. Her work focuses on global metabolomics method development and its application in clinical research. She contributed to the group’s core metabolomics methodology for dried blood spots.
Barbora Piskláková
Senior Engineer, PhD
Barbora holds a PhD in Medical Chemistry and Clinical Biochemistry from Palacký University Olomouc. Her work focuses on LC-MS method development and applying global metabolomics to patient diagnosis and clinical practice.
Aleš Kvasnička
Senior Engineer, PhD
Aleš holds a PhD in Medical Chemistry from Palacký University Olomouc. He specialises in clinical lipidomics — developing and optimising lipidomics methods and applying them to understand lipid metabolism in rheumatological, cardiovascular, neurodegenerative, and oncological diseases.
Sander Johannes Thorbjørnsen Guttorm
PhD Student, MSc
Sander holds an MSc in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Oslo. His PhD project investigates the host metabolic and lipidomic response to sepsis-causing infections, aiming to identify novel biomarkers for earlier and more accurate sepsis diagnosis.