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Algoa Progress

ALGOA PROGRESS is a “New Business from Research Ideas” (TUTLI) project funded by Business Finland and the European Regional Development Fund. The project aims to explore the commercial potential of an algorithm that can predict the progression of osteoarthritis. The project seeks to lay both technological and commercial foundations for a novel technology that allows individualized treatment planning for people with, e.g. osteoarthritis. The objective of this type of treatment planning would be to prevent osteoarthritis or to slow down its progression.

The project is based on long-term basic and applied research carried out by the Biophysics of Bone and Cartilage research group (http://luotain.uef.fi/) at the Department of Applied Physics, UEF, as well as on utilising these research findings in computational modelling.

Andrew Agbaje (andrew.agbaje@uef.fi)

Prof. Agbaje is an award-winning physician and professor (associate) of clinical epidemiology and child health who currently investigates causal relationships of aerobic fitness, physical activity, sedentary behaviour, body composition, insulin resistance, dyslipidaemia, and metabolic syndrome with arterial, cardiac, liver, and kidney structure and function from childhood through young adulthood.

He discovered arterial stiffness as a novel risk factor for paediatric obesity and insulin resistance, identified adolescence as the critical time to interrupt fat mass-insulin resistance pathologic cycle, and demonstrated light-intensity physical activity as a highly effective antidote for reversing excessive fat deposit induced by childhood sedentariness. Recently, he discovered waist-to-height ratio as a specific surrogate for fat mass but not muscle mass that could replace BMI in assessing childhood obesity. Subsequently, he was interviewed LIVE on BBC World News TV to discuss the novel findings.

As of September/October 2023, two of Prof. Agbaje’s publications were placed in the Top 1% highly cited paper in the academic field of Clinical Medicine, while a third publication was placed in the Top 1% highly cited paper in the academic field of Biology & Biochemistry by Clarivate’s Web of Science.

He has a first authored paper in Nature Communications and was interviewed LIVE on BBC World Service Radio Newsday programme on 15th Dec 2023, BBC Radio Devon on 16th Jan 2024, and BBC World News LIVE TV programme on 14th March 2024. The University of Eastern Finland recently recorded a podcast interview of his latest findings as well as a video.

The Endocrine Society in US, recently recorded a podcast interview of his research and discussed his research in the prestigious Endocrine Magazine March 2024 edition. He was recently interviewed by the European Association for the Study of Obesity, a federation of 36 European countries’ professional associations.

His research has received extensive press coverage, with over 2,000 media mentions in 2022 and 2023 in outlets such as BBC, CNN, The Telegraph, Daily Mail, Mirror, BILD, Infobae, Yahoo Lifestyle, Yahoo Sport, US News & World report, DocCheck, MSN, WebMD, Medscape, The Conversation, Jerusalem Post, Helsingin Sanomat, etc, potentially reaching a global audience of more than 4.5 billion. The equivalent advertising value of these news articles is more than 30 million US dollars.

He is the principal investigator of the urFIT-child research group and has strong collaboration with world-renowned pediatricians, exercise physiologists, epidemiologists, and adult clinicians in Canada, US, UK, Germany, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, etc.

He has received several scientific excellence awards including the prestigious EASO-Novo Nordisk Foundation for New Investigator Award in Childhood Obesity with a 300,000 Danish Kroner (~40,000 euro) prize. Other awards are the American Heart Association’s Elizabeth Barrett-Connor Research Award in Epidemiology and Prevention (once), Jeremiah and Rose Stamler Research Award (twice), and Paul Dudley White International Scholar Award (thrice).

He co-authored an American Heart Association Scientific Statement on Environmental Exposures and Pediatric Cardiology, published in Circulation. He had a video discussion of the Scientific Statement. He was an invited guest speaker to the largest mother and child center in Canada – CHU Sainte-Justine Mother and Child University Hospital Center, Canada in March 2023 to speak on the determinants of carotid intima-media thickness and arterial stiffness in pediatrics.

He is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Children’s Health and Exercise Research Centre (CHERC), Department of Public Health and Sports Sciences, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK.

He was recently appointed an Associate Editor in the Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia, and Muscle (JCSM). He serves on the editorial board of Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology (ATVB), and mentors early career editorial board members. He also serves on the editorial board of Pediatric Exercise Science journal.

He is an elected Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology (FESC) and an elected Fellow of the American Heart Association (FAHA). These titles of honour, symbol of excellence and lifetime achievement recognizes his significant contribution to cardiovascular field in Europe and America.

He is an expert advisor to the World Health Organization’s task force on preventing childhood obesity.

Primary email is andrew.agbaje@uef.fi

Secondary email is a.agbaje@exeter.ac.uk

Anna Mustonen (anna.mustonen@uef.fi)

Anna Mustonen is doing her PhD about regional land-use planning in the context of global environmental policy. PhD research is focused on decision-making processes, discourses, dependencies and participation related to environmental policy.

Teacher on the courses Introduction to sustainable future studies Part A and B (in Finnish) and on Sustainable.now course (in English).

Project manager in the Finnish Cultural Foundation funded Argumenta-project “The marginals of sustainability transformation” (Kestävyysmurroksen marginaalit).

Anna Mäki-Petäjä-Leinonen (anna.maki-petaja-leinonen@uef.fi)

Anna Mäki-Petäjä-Leinonen is Professor of Law and Ageing. Her research has focused on Elder Law combining jurisprudence (Civil Law and Social- and Medical Law) with social and medical sciences.
Mäki-Petäjä-Leinonen received her PhD (law) from the University of Helsinki in 2003. The title of her thesis is “Legal Rights of People with Dementia”. Her second monograph (2013) deals with the legal possibilities to anticipate aging. In autumn 2017, she published a book “Basics of Elder Law” with Anja Karvonen-Kälkäjä.
Mäki-Petäjä-Leinonen is involved in many research projects. She is sub-consortium PI in an international research project focusing on the specific issues concerning people who develop dementia or mild cognitive impairment while still working (MCI@work). She is also sub-consortium PI in national research project scrutinizing home-based palliative care of the elderly (MeRela). At the University of Eastern Finland, Mäki-Petäjä-Leinonen leads the Neuro-Ethics and Law research team, which is part of the university’s multidisciplinary Neuroscience research community.
Mäki-Petäjä-Leinonen teaches Elder and Guardianship law and is a teacher in course “Social Law Clinic”. She is docent (adjunct professor) in Family law at the University of Helsinki and docent (adjunct professor) in Elder law at the University of Lapland.

Anna Rawlings (anna.rawlings@uef.fi)

In my research, I examine motivation, learning, and well-being in different learning environments and among learners of different ages. I am particularly interested in how temperament guides these phenomena, processes, and their interconnections. I have started working as a grant researcher at UEF in May 2023.

I am also coordinator of FinEd, or the Finnish Multidisciplinary Doctoral Training Network on Educational Sciences (2022–).

Anna Widlund (annawid@uef.fi)

I mainly work as a researcher and university lecturer at the Department of Special Education at Åbo Akademi University, and this semester (2023-2024) also as a visiting researcher at the University of Eastern Finland. My research interests include students’ school well-being and motivation, with a particular focus on individual developmental trajectories of well-being (i.e., school engagement and burnout) and motivation (competence- and value-beliefs, and costs) during educational transitions, and the relations between well-being, motivational beliefs, academic performance, and future aspirations.

Anna-Leena Nylund (anna-leena.nylund@uef.fi)

My primary tasks are
– Dynasty Information Service Application, applying the system versatilely and instructing other UEF users
– general administrative tasks at the Faculty of Science, Forestry and Technology
– instruction of Faculty’s doctoral students, especially on Kuopio campus, and preparation of their administrative matters needed for public defenses
– registry tasks of the Faculty
– updates on UEF Annual Calendar and Heimo intranet pages

Anna-Maija Castrén (anna-maija.castren@uef.fi)

Anna-Maija works as a Professor of Sociology at the Department of Social Sciences, University of Eastern Finland. She is the coordinator of the multi-disciplinary bachelor program (social psychology, social pedagogy, and sociology) in the UEF’s Kuopio campus. Anna-Maija did her master’s and doctoral studies at the University of Helsinki and defended her PhD on everyday social networks and their life historical formation in Helsinki and in St. Petersburg in 2001. In her post doc, she focused on the networks of personal relationships, family, and kin, after separation. Both studies were published as monographs in Finnish.

Anna-Maija has expertise in qualitative social network analysis and together with colleagues has developed the figurational perspective (also configurational perspective) in studying personal relationships. She is interested in family understandings in different settings and life-stages, in friendship, family trajectories, marriage and weddings, and paths to parenthood. Her recent works focus on the families of new-borns (in Helsinki) whose mother was not in a hetero marriage at the time of the birth. NETREP is her recent research project that focuses on young adults’ intimate futures in Finland, Portugal and Scotland in the context of global crises.

Anna-Maija is a long-time board member of the European Sociological Association’s Research Network on Families and Intimate Lives (ESA RN13) and was elected as the chair of recently funded multi-disciplinary association, the Finnish Society for Research on Families and Personal Relationships (PELS).

Anna-Maria Puharinen (anna-maria.puharinen@uef.fi)

I work as a Human Resources Specialist at the UEF Human Resources Services. My responsibilities and duties include:

  • recruitment processes and employment contracts, HR administration, guidance and counselling
  • recruitment management system
  • recruitment channels, recruitment communication