Dr Kaukonen is an academic veterinarian and has dedicated her career to develop translational models to prevent and cure inherited eye diseases. She obtained her PhD (with distinction) in 2020 at the University of Helsinki on her work characterizing genetically several novel spontaneous canine models affected with inherited retinal dystrophy, glaucoma and microphthalmia. She then worked as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, funded by the Sigrid Jusélius Foundation, at the Prof Robert E. MacLaren group focusing on clinical retinal gene therapy at the University of Oxford. There, she developed novel therapeutic approaches utilizing e.g. CRISPR gene editing and mirtron-mediated gene silencing to treat inherited retinal dystrophies.
Recently Dr Kaukonen returned to the University of Helsinki, where she leads her Translational eye disease genetics and gene therapy -group at the Faculty of Medicine. She was awarded Adjunct Professor (Docent) title in 2024 in Molecular Biology. Dr Kaukonen and her team has received over 830k € competed funding, and currently her team is financially supported by e.g. the Sigrid Jusélius, Mary and Georg C. Ehrnrooth and Evald and Hilda Nissi Foundations.