Lari Lehtiö is a professor of Structural Biology at the Faculty of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, University of Oulu, Finland. He acts also as a coordinator for Biocenter Oulu Structural Biology core facility. His research focus is on protein ADP-ribosylation and on structural studies of the enzymes involved in the post-translational signaling mechanism. He also develops small molecule inhibitors for these proteins interfering with the signaling mechanism, which are often misregulated in especially cancer cells. Such small molecules can be used to validate drug targets and could potentially lead to new therapeutics.