Alina Kuusisto (alina.kuusisto@uef.fi)
I work as a project researcher at the Karelian Institute, University of Eastern Finland. In gained my PhD in 2017 in Finnish history. I have studied higher education policy, history of education and agriculture, Finnish and European cross-border cooperation, as well as the local and regional history of North Karelia and Eastern Finland in 1800s and 1900s .
An attractive multicultural work environment in the wellbeing services county of North Savo (TRACTION)
Anndra Parviainen (anndra.parviainen@uef.fi)
Researcher in various research groups like cancer research (INEXCA), quinoa food innovation research (Clinical Research Nurse in Disruptive Green Project) and recently in COVID research group (Northern Periphery and Arctic Programme Covid-19 Response Umbrella Project). Issues related to precision medicine, personalized care, and the integration of genomics in nursing education are my main areas of interest and are also related to my dissertation.
Azmeary Ferdoush (azmeary.ferdoush@uef.fi)
I am an Academy of Finland (AOF) postdoctoral researcher based at the Karelian Institute. My AOF project explores whether, why, and how the state creates a situation where refugees and asylum seekers are kept indeterminately waiting. It is geographically focused on the Rohingya refugees in the camps of Bangladesh and the asylum seekers residing in different reception centers in Finland.
At the Institute, my works engage with the university strategic program that focuses specifically on the profiling area of “cultural encounters, mobilities and borders.” Broadly, I am interested in exploring the way man-made ideas of borders and bounded spaces affect human mobility and vice versa. As such, I specialize in the study of state, territory, borders, sovereignty, (non)citizenship, and migration. At the same time, I often remain critical regarding “importing” ready-made ideas from the Global North to the Global South in terms of both theory and methods. My scholarship thus sits at the intersection of political geography, critical geopolitics, decolonial praxis, and qualitative research methods.
You can find more about my research here.
Biosphere North Savo : Utilization of biomass and biorefining techniques for novel industrial products -development project
BlackGreen – Sustainable Applications of Biochar in North Karelia
Blas Mola (blas.mola@uef.fi)
My main research lines focus on all topics related to biomass production for energy, both from forest management and fast-growing plantations. My interests entail the production and economic aspects, policy framework, environmental effects and social consequences of their development. In addition to this, I have interest on the analysis and modelling of risk, especially combined with ecosystem services, either caused by natural disturbances, man-made origins or social conflicts.
Concerning teaching, I am in charge of advanced courses on bioenergy (“Supply and energy use of lignocellulosic biomass”, and “Bioenergy markets and policies”) and methods (“Academic skills” and “Research methods in forest sciences”). In addition, I am supervisor of several MSc and DSc students. I keep close cooperation at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (Sweden), the Norwegian Institute of bioeconomy research (Norway), the Forest Science and Technology Centre of Catalonia (Spain) and the Northwest A&F University (China).
Boosting the bioeconomy of the North Savo area – bioboost project
Christopher Asquith (christopher.asquith@uef.fi)
Dr Asquith first completed a BSc and MSc in Chemistry at the University of Southampton. During this time, he worked for Prof. A. Ganesan on novel asthma targets and epigenetic prostate cancer modulators, which included a 3-month placement abroad at the University of Eastern Finland. He then went on to do a PhD in Medicinal Chemistry at University College London under the supervision of Dr S. Hilton, working on zinc abstractors as a treatment for retroviral infections. This work was part of a broad international Consortium including the University of Zurich, Switzerland and Zelinsky Institute, Moscow, Russia and others, targeting the nucleocapsid protein of FIV/HIV. Subsequently, he continued his interest in innovative ring systems with a short stay at the University of Cyprus working with Prof. P. Koutentis, before joining the Structural Genomics Consortium at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill working on chemical probe development for kinases with Prof. T. Willson. This was followed by a move to the School of Medicine to work as the lead medicinal chemist on the Illuminating the Druggable Genome (IDG) kinase program working with Prof. G. Johnson. Starting his own research team, he moved to the University of Eastern Finland to start a medicinal Chemistry program, working on novel kinase indications and understanding kinase solvation shells as a prognostic marker for Kinome wide inhibitor promiscuity.