Arttu Puhakka ([email protected])
I provide training and coaching for leaders, managers, and work communities. The topics of my training and coaching programs typically include coaching leadership, leading change and transformation, strengths-based and motivational leadership, solution-focused workplace communication, and self-leadership.
Within the field of positive psychology, I train and coach participants in emotional intelligence, mindfulness, growth mindset, and strengths-based development. I also provide training on effective knowledge work practices and methods.
My individual and group coaching is based on a solution-focused approach, helping clients identify strengths, opportunities, and practical pathways toward their goals.
Brexit, migration and mobility
Brexit provides an excellent opportunity to examine how the formal (state) and informal (social) processes of border-making relate to each other and play out in the everyday life of those impacted by this historic change. As the transitionary period after UK’s exit from the EU ends in December 2020, it is important to discuss the impact of the Brexit process from a migrant perspective. The prolonged uncertainty has already had an impact on the lives of intra-European migrants at multiple levels: for their legal status and rights as residents, for their work opportunities and career prospects and for identity and the sense of belonging and feeling of social inclusion to their host societies – be they the UK for the Nordic migrants or any of the other EU countries for the Brits.
UEF is host to several research projects that focus on the impact of Brexit on intra-European migrants. Dr. Tiina Sotkasiira has interviewed Finns living in Scotland and England as a part of her research on Brexit and Finns in Britain and Dr. Saara Koikkalainen has collected data among Nordic nationals in London . Together with two colleagues, researcher Peter Holley and Dr. Nicol Savinetti, Dr. Koikkalainen has also conducted a survey among Brits living in Europe (n=752).
Christopher Asquith ([email protected])
Chris Asquith is a Principal Investigator at the School of Pharmacy, University of Eastern Finland (UEF). The Asquith Research Lab focuses on the design, synthesis, and evaluation of small-molecule inhibitors targeting kinases within the understudied human kinome. The lab aims to uncover novel therapeutic opportunities by exploring previously uncharacterized kinase targets and their roles in disease.
Prior to his role at UEF, Chris held a Research Assistant Professor position in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of North Carolina (UNC), USA. During this time, he was part of the Illuminating the Druggable Genome (IDG) kinase program. He also worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the same department under the supervision of Prof. Gary Johnson, as well as in the School of Pharmacy under the supervision of Prof. Tim Willson within the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC). Chris completed his PhD in Medicinal Chemistry at University College London (UCL), UK, and obtained his BSc and MSc in Chemistry from the University of Southampton, UK.
Eevi Laukkanen ([email protected])
I provide support to accessing EU and related international funding programmes by:
- monitoring and identifying suitable funding opportunities for researchers in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Business Studies,
- providing advice on the presentation and content of proposals and application procedures, in line with funder requirements and expectations, and
- participating in the consortium development and proposal preparation process and reviewing and editing proposal components, as required.
Forest myths – challenges and opportunities for evidence-based forest discussion in Finland
Frank Adusei-Mensah ([email protected])
Skilled Public & Global health Adjunct Professor and senior Researcher. Email: [email protected]. I have extensive experience in vaccine preventable disease and vaccine surveillance research, research supervision, and emerging technology adaptation in public/ global health research.
Research interest:
Pharmacoepidemiology of vaccines,
Pandemic preparedness and vaccine preventable conditions,
Digital public health including AI and M-health interventions,
Interventional studies and appraised research,
Public health and epidemiological research methods,
In-utero/ early life exposures and later-life health outcomes studies.
Teaching, Course director for;
Evidence-based health care,
Occupational health and safety,
Digital public health,
Emerging public health challenges and opportunities in Africa,
Topical lectures on; a)Infectious disease epidemiology, b) Pharmacoepidemiology, and b) Systematic review & meta-analysis.
Supervision: MPH thesis and Ph.D. dissertations.
Research Group: PI & Research group Leader: GLODIVAX Research Group. The vaccine monitoring, pandemic preparedness and digital public health research group, Institute of public Health, UEF, Kuopio.
Projects: KIHD, PREDIC-NEURO, MaVaxTrust, AMEN, Niselo.
Harri Kalimo ([email protected])
The economy and the environment are fundamental elements of sustainable Finnish, European and indeed global futures. The EU continues to strive towards a more competitive economy, while it at the same time faces enormous environmental challenges in many areas from resource use to biodiversity and climate change. Moreover, these environmental and economic challenges are tightly intertwined. The search for increasing global welfare needs to take place within the limited boundaries of the natural resources available today and for the generations to come. This challenge promises on the other hand also opportunities for those that are the most advanced in “greening their economies”.
These societal challenges and opportunities are at the core my professorship on the “circular economy” and the EU and international economic law. The societal objectives and the support for achieving them takes to a notable extent place in the laws and policies that govern the fast evolving environmental and economic sectors, and their interactions in Finland, the EU and beyond. The objective of my professorship is to deliver theoretically advanced, interdisciplinary and policy relevant research and education on this environment-economy nexus, focusing on the circular economy, sustainable trade agreements and green public procurement.
While pursuing this vision, I have engaged in the development of legal theories on e.g. the role of law in sustainability transitions, the notion of extended producer responsibility, ‘flexilateralism’ in EU trade policy, ‘market access’ in EU internal market law, as well as the interstate law heuristics of the EU and the USA. My methodological contributions include ‘comparative judicial discourse analysis’ as well as approaches to legal ‘coherence’ and the ‘softness’ of governance instruments. Empirically, my research has investigated e.g. the mechanisms of mediating environmental and economic considerations in law, the coherence between EU trade policy and the European Green Deal, the interactions between of data law and competition law, and of competition law with trade law. I frame my work through significant societal questions, such as waste electronics, electric vehicles, pirated content online and the sustainability of aviation fuels, usually in the context research projects funded by e.g. Academy of Finland, Strategic Research Council (STN), HorizonEurope, LIFE and ERASMUS+. My PhD in 2004 (‘e-Cycling’) was amongst the first broad legal analyses of what has become known as ‘the circular economy’.
2.11.0.0
IASSW Nordic Baltic Regional Resource Centre
There are similar regional centres funded by the International Association of Schools of Social Work RRCs in other regions of the world such as China, Oceania and Eastern Africa. Our network of university partners is committed to exchange and communication across participating countries for the promotion of global social work education (including fieldwork) and the recognition of best examples of innovative and transformative social work research and practice.
We seek to create new opportunities for active partnership in teaching and research on the contemporary issues such as sustainability, diversity, inequality, migration and promote the regional professional profile of social work education and research. The centre is coordinated by the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences, Germany and University of Eastern Finland, Finland, higher education institutions with a longstanding commitment to global social work education and scholarship. The current coordinators of this centre are Professors Chaitali Das, (FUAS), Janet Carter Anand (UEF).
Ina Pöhner ([email protected])
Early during my scientific career, I focused on studying protein-protein interactions by computational methods. During my PhD, I shifted my focus to protein-small molecule interactions and their modulation in the context of computer-aided drug design for neglected tropical diseases. As a passionate Linux-user and administrator, I moved on to dive into aspects of scientific databases, data management, biocuration, and FAIR data (data that is Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable).
My research at UEF finally connects all the dots: I currently study various anti-bacterial, anti-viral, anti-protozoal, and anti-cancer targets, utilizing powerful combinations of computer-aided drug discovery and modeling techniques, programming, databases, and artificial intelligence (AI). My research focuses primarily on data-intensive drug discovery problems and the application of AI in drug discovery pipelines. For example, my recent projects involved several semi-automated modeling and docking studies for hundreds of target candidates drawn from Omics-level datasets and AI-accelerated billion-scale virtual screening efforts.
Given its data-intensive nature, my research heavily relies on high-performance computing resources and the Finnish supercomputers hosted by CSC – IT Center for Science. As a CSC Scientific Computing Ambassador for UEF, I act as a bridge between UEF’s researchers and CSC experts and aim to support other UEFians in making the most of CSC’s services and resources – Whether you would like to learn more about how you can utilize CSC super- and cloud computing resources in your research, get support for data management, or join some of the various courses and training opportunities offered by CSC, feel free to reach out!