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The Bioinnovation Center is launching a doctoral school and offers funding for in total 10-12 doctoral candidates. The aim is to encourage professors from different fields and disciplines of Aalto University to combine their expertise and to develop jointly interdisciplinary research endeavors.

‘Bioeconomy is a cornerstone of the Finnish economy, and I am confident that this research will contribute to generating new beginnings for this sector’, says Niklas von Weymarn, CEO of Metsä Spring, and a member of the Bioinnovation Center’s project evaluation panel. ‘Many existing industrial processes, especially related to bioeconomy, have been born from research seeking answers to natural phenomena. Also, in today’s globalised world strong interdisciplinarity as well as working on industrial development and basic research in parallel have become success factors.

The selected projects to the doctoral school are:

• “Cellulose-based spatial origami metamaterials and structures for sustainable and versatile packaging solutions” by Jarkko Niiranen (ENG), Kirsi Peltonen (SCI), and Masood Masodian (ARTS)
• “AI-guided biohybrid assembly platform for e-textiles” by Patrick Rinke (SCI) and Jaana Vapaavuori (CHEM)
• “Coatings of Lignin Spheres for Packaging/Textiles” by Monika Österberg (CHEM), Karl Alexander Henn (CHEM), and Pekka Oinas (CHEM)
• “Computational fabric” by Simo Särkkä (ELEC+FCAI), Kirsi Niinimäki (ARTS), Jaana Vapaavuori (CHEM), Yu Xiao (ELEC), and Emmi Pouta (ARTS)
• “Sustainable Intelligent Packaging Solutions” by Jouni Paltakari (CHEM) and Riku Jäntti (ELEC)

‘I was very impressed by the great number of excellent project ideas that we received. Ranking the applications was a difficult task’, says Michael Hummel, the Director of the Bioinnovation Center. ‘Our future research looks really fascinating and I am excited to start the cooperation with all the parties in this Center. I am also grateful for the valuable input that we receive from our industrial partners as well as the internal experts.’

Bioinnovation Center will now open 5 PhD positions for these projects. The aim is to start the recruitment process in November and have the first doctoral candidates starting in the doctoral school in early 2022. Another project call will be opened during the year 2022.

The evaluation committee consisted of 12 Aalto university’s internal and industry representatives. The open call received 17 proposals.

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