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 .
Alireza Rahmani ([email protected])
My research has been focused on developing semiconductor materials for energy and environmental applications. At PPG, I am exploring different artificial SEI layer compositions and deposition techniques to enhance the electrochemical performance of silicon-based anodes in lithium-ion batteries.
Ambre Ayats ([email protected])
I am H Ambre Ayats (she/her or they/them). I am a French postdoctoral researcher, working at University of Eastern Finland, as part of the Algorithmic Data Analysis group in Kuopio, Finland.
My postdoctoral project, titled DaTHum: From Data-centered To Human-centered AI, is financed by the YUFE4Postdoc initiative and is supervised by Prof. Pauli Miettinen (School of Computing, University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio (Finland)) and Prof. Dagmar Borchers (Department 9 – Cultural Studies, Universität Bremen, Bremen (Germany)). This project, interleaving computer science and philosophy, aims to study the data-centered paradigma in artificial intelligence, from its emergence to its contemporary consequences, and to sketch the possibility a human-centered – or user-centered – paradigma.
Find more about my profile on my personal page.
Anam Hammid ([email protected])
I am a molecular biologist with further training and expertise in the field of drug research. I have completed my Ph.D. degree in the field of ocular drug development. My Ph.D. thesis focused on the quantification and determination of activities of drug-metabolizing enzymes (DME) in major eye tissues of preclinical species and humans. The outcomes highlighted that there is a profound variation in enzyme expression levels and activities among ocular tissues. Moreover, variation among species further complicates the translation studies. My research findings will help in ocular drug development and aid in understanding the complications associated with drug pharmacokinetics.
During my Ph.D., I gained expertise in various skills and techniques including enzyme assay optimization (kinetics, activity, and inhibition), proteomics study design and analysis, proteins extraction, western blot, ocular tissues extraction, biological sample preparation/homogenization, LC/MS analysis, cell culturing, etc.,
Currently, I am working as a post-doctoral researcher in the field of targeted and global proteomics. Proteomics is an advanced, highly sensitive, and high throughput technique to profile and characterize the protein expression levels in biological fluids. I am working toward developing my skills and deepening my expertise in the field of proteomics. I am looking forward to being an independent ocular drug research and proteomics scientist.
Andrew Agbaje ([email protected])
Prof. Agbaje is an award-winning physician and professor (associate) of clinical epidemiology and child health who investigates the causal relationships of aerobic fitness, physical activity, sedentary behaviour, obesity, insulin resistance, dyslipidaemia, and metabolic syndrome with arterial, cardiac, liver, and kidney structure and function from childhood through young adulthood.
Prof. Agbaje is the world’s 1st (Number 1) highest-ranked scholar, best in Europe and in the Nordics in arterial stiffness specialty according to ScholarGPS November 2025 global ranking. He was ranked first in the top 0.01% of scholars on arterial stiffness research worldwide, both in productivity and quality in arterial stiffness research in the last 5 years.
He was recently awarded the highly prestigious European Research Council (ERC) 2026 Starting Grant of 1.5 million euros, the first ever at the Institute of Public Health and Clinical Nutrition, UEF.
Research group Website https://urfit-child.com
American Society of Nutrition Flemming Quaade Award Video Interview
TEDx Talk – Tailor’s Tape to the Rescue
Rising Star in Preventive Cardiology – Prestigious Designation by the European Heart Journal
Prof. Agbaje discovered childhood tobacco smoking as a cause of premature cardiac damage and identified that smoking prevalence increased 15 times between the age of 13 to 17 years. He also 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.
In December 2025, the American Heart Association selected Prof Agbaje’s study as one of the world’s cutting-edge advances in cardiovascular medicine in 2025. Similarly, in December 2024, the American Heart Association selected Prof Agbaje’s study as one of the world’s most significant advances in cardiovascular research in 2024. In 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 is the main supervisor of seven (7) PhD candidates.
He has single/first-authored original papers in highly prestigious journals such as JACC, Diabetes Care, and Nature Communications. He 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 recorded a podcast interview of his findings as well as a video.
The Endocrine Society in US recorded a podcast interview of his research and discussed his research in the prestigious Endocrine Magazine March 2024 edition. He gave a press conference at the ENDO 2024 congress in Boston, US. He was interviewed by the European Association for the Study of Obesity, a federation of 36 European countries’ professional associations and subsequently had a video interview at the European Congress on Obesity.
His research has received extensive press coverage, with over 2,500 media mentions from 2022 through 2024 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, YLE, 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 received the prestigious inaugural American Society of Nutrition Foundation-Novo Nordisk Foundation Flemming Quaade Award for Innovative Approaches to Childhood Obesity with 500,000 Danish Kroner (€67,000 / 70,000 USD) prize. the 2024 EASO-NNF for New Investigator Award in Childhood Obesity with a 300,000 Danish Kroner (€40,000 / 44,000 USD) prize. Other awards are the Endocrine Society Award for outstanding abstract, American Heart Association’s Elizabeth Barrett-Connor Research Award in Epidemiology and Prevention (once), Jeremiah and Rose Stamler Research Award (twice), Early Career Investigator Award for Preventive Cardiovascular Medicine (Once), and Paul Dudley White International Scholar Award (five consecutive times).
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 has given invited talks at the largest mother and child center in Canada – CHU Sainte-Justine Mother and Child University Hospital Center, Canada, European Society of Cardiology Congress, European Congress on Obesity, Endocrine Society Congress in the US, Artery Society Congress, etc.
Honorary Research Fellow at the Children’s Health and Exercise Research Centre (CHERC), Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK from 2023 – 2026.
He is an Associate Editor in the Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia, and Muscle (JCSM), Associate Editor of the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology (EJPC), 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 npj Exercise Medicine and Health and, editorial board of Pediatric Exercise Science journals.
He is an elected Fellow of the American College of Cardiology (FACC), Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology (FESC), an elected Fellow of the American Heart Association (FAHA), an elected Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine (FNYAM), and an elected member of Sigma Xi. These titles of honour, symbol of excellence and lifetime achievement, recognizes his significant contribution to the cardiovascular field in Europe and America.
He is an expert advisor to the World Health Organization,
and a member of the European Association for the Study of Obesity and the US Endocrine Society’s task force on preventing childhood obesity.
Primary email is [email protected]
Secondary email is [email protected]
Anette Hall ([email protected])
Academic Degrees
- D.Sc. (Tech.) in Technical Physics (Computational Biophysics), Tampere University of Technology, 2011
- M.Sc. (Tech.) in Technical Physics (Computational Biophysics), Tampere University of Technology, 2007
Major Positions and Appointments
- Post-Doctoral Researcher, Department of Neurology, University of Eastern Finland, 2011-
- Researcher, Ph.D. Student, Department of Physics (Biological Physics), Tampere University of Technology, Finland, 2007-2011
- Research Assistant, M.Sc. Student, Department of Physics (Biological Physics), Tampere University of Technology, Finland, 2006-2007
- Research Assistant, Department of Physics (Applied Optics), Tampere University of Technology, Finland, 2004
- Teaching Assistant, Department of Physics, Tampere University of Technology, Finland, 2007-2010
Anita Wagner ([email protected])
Anita Katharina Wagner is Associate Professor in the Division of Health Policy and Insurance Research at the Department of Population Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute. In 2026/2027, Dr. Wagner serves as a Fulbright Finland-Saastamoinen Foundation Scholar at the University of Eastern Finland.
With colleagues across the world, Dr. Wagner conducts empirical research generating evidence for answering challenging health system questions. Their work, frequently in large databases, evaluates impacts of policy changes on medicines approvals, availability, access, affordability, use, and spending. Currently, the research teams focus on improving communication of benefits, harms, and evidence uncertainties of new cancer medicines in the United States and Europe.
Anna Heinonen ([email protected])
The key themes of my research are intimacy, sexuality, gender, and forms of close relationships organized beyond couple and nuclear family structures. I am currently studying these themes in a project focusing on sexuality and gender in Finnish communal living. The project is funded by the Kone Foundation. My previous research examines intimacy in friendship and roommate relations in Finnish communal living, as well as the processes of separation among LGBTQIA+ people.
I am the editor-in-chief for the blog perheyhteiskunta.fi, which popularizes social research on family and close relationships. I hold a PhD in Gender Studies.
Anna Kaasinen ([email protected])
Research work of University Lecturer Anna Kaasinen concentrates on mathematical modelling, inverse problems, and their applications. The primary focus of her research is to develop mathematical models and computational methods especially for process control.
Kaasinen teaches courses in mathematics and provides study guidance to undergraduate students. She also takes part in planning and developing teaching in general at the department. Her research related to teaching and learning concentrates mainly on flipped learning and on university mathematics students’ study habits and the use of learning materials.
Anna Kinnunen ([email protected])
I am a folklorist and cultural researcher specializing in cultural studies in mental health. In my doctoral dissertation (2020) I examined cultural conceptions and vernacular models of thought related to mental illness. I have also conducted research on old age and dementia. From 2016 to 2019, I worked in the research project Between the Normal and the Abnormal – Cultural meanings of Dementia and Old Age in Finland and Russia, funded by the Kone Foundation. The project resulted in the edited volume Babuškoja, teräsvaareja ja digisenioreita (eds. Kinnunen, Könönen & Vakimo 2022), which explores experiences of ageing and cultural imaginaries related to old age in Finland and Russia.
I work as a university lecturer in folklore studies in the degree programme of cultural studies. In addition to folklore studies, I teach common core courses in cultural studies and supervise theses in both folklore and cultural studies. I am also responsible for the study module Terveyden monikulttuuriset ulottuvuudet (Multicultural Dimensions of Health, 25 ECTS), which introduces students to cultural aspects of health, illness and well‑being across different populations and sociocultural contexts. Among other things, I am in charge of the courses Kulttuurinen mielenterveystutkimus (Cultural Mental Health Studies) and Vernakulaari terveyskulttuuri (Vernacular Health Culture). I have received the Good Teacher Award granted by the cultural studies student association Nefa in 2023 and 2024.