FiDiPro Professors

FiDiPro – the Finland Distinguished Professor Programme is a funding programme jointly launched by the Academy of Finland and Tekes – the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation. FiDiPro enables distinguished researchers, both international and expatriates to work and team up with the 'best of the best' in Finnish academic research.

The School of Sciece has five FiDiPro Professors:

  • Erik Aurell
  • Ari T. Friberg
  • Sirkka Järvenpää
  • János Kertész
  • Josef Rauschecker

The School of Science has three  FiDiPro Fellows:

  • Koen van Leemput
  • Fa-Hsuan Lin
  • Xiaohong Wang

 

Erik Aurell
KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden

Prof. Aurell's research interests concern the relationship between physical, computational and biological systems, especially systems biology and distributed communication systems.

Research project: The advanced concepts and techniques developed in the field of statistical physics have in recent years been turned into powerful tools for the modelling and analysis of large, distributed systems also outside of the traditional domains of physics, for example in the study of information and communication networks and the models of systems biology. The research project brings together top researchers and research units to advance this fertile and highly active area spanning computer science, physics and computational aspects of biology.

Finnish contact person and host organisation: Professor Pekka Orponen, Aalto University School of Science

Funding period: 2008-2013

Ari T. Friberg
Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden)


Professor Ari T. Friberg is reviewed as being among the one per cent of top scientists in the world in the fields of optics and photonics. He is an internationally highly recognised scholar with an extensive and varied list of publications.

Research project: The project’s main research field is optical physics. Advancements in optics and photonics are key drivers for technological innovations of the 21st century. In particular optical phenomena, components and devices in micro- and nano-scale dimensions will play an ever more important role. One of the goals is to make Finland stand as one of the leading centres of micro- and nano-optics research in Northern Europe. The research project is run jointly by the University of Joensuu and Aalto University School of Science.

Finnish project leader and organisation: Academy Professor Jari Turunen, University of Eastern Finland and Professor Matti Kaivola, Aalto University, School of Science

Funding period: 2007-2012

Sirkka Järvenpää
University of Texas at Austin, USA

The Corinna project headed by Professor Järvenpää will intensify the competence in the SimLab business networks and the exploitation of related information technology.

Research project: The project will develop the Virtual Value Space (VVS) concept to promote expertise in joint innovations made between companies. Furthermore, the project will empirically study immaterial rights in joint innovation processes. As a result it will generate new scientific data for the organisation and management of joint innovations. Professor Järvenpää is an expert in global virtual teams and group functioning.

Finnish host: Aalto University School of Science,  Professor Riitta Smeds

János Kertész
Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary

Professor János Kertész is a worldwide renowned expert in complex systems. He has been active in many fields of statistical physics and its applications.

FiDiPro project: COSYR. The aim of the project is to carry out research on complex systems especially techno-social and ICT-based ones, as well as to strengthen the expertise and its training in this respect. Using data mining, data analysis, and modelling techniques and tools the plan is to explore the properties of these techno-social network systems for novel application development. The focus will be on problems like community formation and identification, relation between link weights, network structure and functionality, evolution of networks, and the role of time scales.

Specifically the plan is to investigate networks of communication technology and social ICT-based nets and their collective behaviour. The research results are expected to contribute to the understanding of complex networks and lead to several practical applications related to the well-being of the society by optimising communication networks, introducing information spreading strategies, managing risk or other related aspects of community or civil design, and by developing computational analysis and modelling tools for the use of policy makers and technology developers to harness social ICT and collective behaviour in them. In this, training researchers and experts is an important part of the project.

Finnish host organisation:Aalto University School of Science,  Centre of Excellence in Computational Complex Systems Research - COSY, Department of Biomedical Engineering and Computational Science - BECS, Professor Kimmo Kaski

Josef Rauschecker
Georgetown University Washington DC (USA)

Professor Josef Rauschecker is among the leading scientists in systems neuroscience in the world.

Research project: The project explores key questions in systems neuroscience, such as how sensory features of objects are processed in parallel and combined across the senses to allow fast and effortless perception, and how the human brain can selectively attend certain objects over others. The project will make it possible to unravel mechanisms of neural plasticity underlying goal-directed multi-sensory perception and perceptual learning.

Finnish project leader and organisation: Academy Professor Mikko Sams, Aalto University School of Science

Funding period: 2007-2013

Koen van Leemput
Harvard University, USA

Dr. Van Leemput is an expert in computational neuroimaging and has many years of experience in pluridisciplinary work with clinicians, computer scientists, engineers and physicists, and a very strong background in advanced software development for medical image analysis.

Research project: Computational analysis of brain images: towards a useful tool in clinical practice Brain diseases account for 35% of the overall disease burden in Europe, and their cost to society is expected to increase considerably due to aging of the European population. Since therapies for brain diseases are
becoming increasingly available, there is an urgent need for quantitative diagnosis, treatment planning, and progress monitoring tools, as these will allow patients to receive the most effective treatment starting from the earliest stages of their disease. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a routine clinical procedure that yields detailed three-dimensional images of the body's soft tissues, making it an ideal candidate for detecting and assessing brain disease in an accurate and quantitative fashion.

At present, however, no computational tools exist that can analyze clinically acquired brain MRI scans automatically, forcing clinicians to merely eyeball two-dimensional projections visually, or painstakingly delineate structures of interest using manual interaction.Computational tools for analyzing the type of MRI scans used in basic neuroscientific studies have seen tremendous advances in recent years, but these techniques are fundamentally inept at analyzing MRI scans acquired in routine clinical practice. The aim of this ambitious project is to develop sophisticated computational modeling approaches and tools to enlarge the scope of quantitative brain MRI analysis from mere scientific studies of the human brain into real-world clinical applications.

Contact person and host organisation: Aalto University School of Science, Department of Information and Computer Science, Professor Erkki Oja

Fa-Hsuan Lin
Institute of Biomedical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taiwan and Harvard Medical School, Boston,
USA

Dr. Fa-Hsuan Lin has worked in the leading research institute in Boston, where he has developed MRI theories successfully. FiDiPro project: The project will develop methods for ultra-low-field MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging ) in
order to improve MR image resolution and shorten the measurement time to reach a level that will benefit brain research and allow new clinical applications. The device will allow one to measure the structure of the brain and cerebral activity virtually at the same time. The project will optimize existing methods for low-field applications such as massively parallel measurement and so-called compressed sensing and new methods, e.g., based on the use of a priori information will be developed. The project exploits and links to the ongoing
major EU-funded project coordinated by the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Computational Science of the Helsinki University of Technology where a new kind of ultra-low-field MRI and a whole-head MEG-MRI device will be developed.

Finnish host organisation: Aalto University School of Science, Department of Biomedical Engineering and Computational Science, Professor Risto Ilmoniemi

Funding period: 1/2010-12/2014

Xiaohong Wang
Tsinghua University, China


Project: Modern tissue engineering - cell culture studies on digitally designed and manufactured 3D scaffolds

The development of tissue engineering and organ manufacturing faces many challenges. Modern additive manufacturing (AM) enables 3-D biomimetic structures with specially designed patterns, material compositions, and mechanical properties. AM also offers unique opportunity to precisely control the construct architecture (pore size, shape, orientation, and interconnectivity). The goals of this project are to find optimal 3-D cell culture conditions for AM’d tissue scaffolds, and to prepare scaffolds which may eventually be applied in tissue failure substitution as artificial bone, cartilage or other tissues. Multidisciplinary novel biomanufacturing research combines competences from microbiology, biochemistry, medical disciplines from eventual application areas, materials and additive manufacturing research, complex computational tasks and 3-D tissue modeling.

Results benefit Finnish scientific community and medical device, mechanical engineering, SW- and biotech industries through new scientific knowledge in tissue engineering and its optimal conditions, and directly applicable knowledge for developing AM techniques, 3-D modeling of tissues and tissue substitute materials. Close cooperation with leading Finnish institutes, and with Tsinghua University enables effective dissemination of the scientific results and offers an attractive research arena for researchers. Collaboration with other Aalto University School of Science and Technology research units provides synergies. The expertise at Department of Biomedical Engineering and Computational Science (BECS) and the The Laboratory of Polymer Technology (POTE) complement the work done at BIT Research Centre; this collaboration may lead to innovations and fast application by Finnish industry.

Contact person and host organisation: Aalto University School of Science and Technology, BIT Research Centre, Professor Marja Toivonen