The Academy of Finland’s Research Council for Natural Sciences and Engineering chose new Academy Research Fellows

The Academy of Finland’s Research Council for Natural Sciences and Engineering has decided to grant funding for 20 new Academy Research Fellows. The Council’s funding for Academy Research Fellows totals around nine million euros. In addition to salary funding, the Academy Research Fellows will receive funding to cover costs of setting up a research team and other research costs. The Research Council has set aside seven million euros to fund the research costs of the new Academy Research Fellows over the next five years.

41 per scent of the applications received an overall rating of 6  or 5. Only 24 per cent of these could be funded. The success rate of all submitted applications was around 10 per cent. In their funding decisions, the Council emphasised the importance of the applicant’s qualifications and the high scientific quality of the research. Additionally, the Council appreciated the applicant’s previous mobility and planned mobility during the research project, as well as their importance in implementig the research plan and furthering the applicant’s career in research.

“In their career stage, the funded researchers are internationally the best in their fields. The share of women in the funded applicants is unfortunately low compared to the last two years”, says the Council Chair Reko Leino. “The Council aims to fund a wide range of Academy Research Fellows from different fields within the natural sciences and engineering. However, we do receive very few applications from hard technology fields, such as mechanical and manufacturing engineering, process and chemical engineering and electrical engineering”, Leino says.

Many of the funded projects focus on future technologies

Sergey Andreev from the University of Tampere studies in his research in communications engineering the advanced three-dimensional network architectures which connect the terrestrial and non-terrestrial parts of the network and utilise fleets of unmanned aerial vehicles. The research focuses on the possibilities radiocommunication based on millimetre waves can offer and on the comprehensive performance modelling of dynamic three-dimensional networks that support multiple connections.

Juha Lemmetyinen from the Finnish Meteorological Institute develops methods for remote mapping the total mass and the water equivalent of seasonal snow covers. Methods for remote mapping to measure snow mass are still insufficient concerning weather forecasts, climate research and hydrology. The project aims to correct this fault by developing methods for interpreting and modelling existent satellite archives for the needs of climatology. The project also develops methods for using a new type of censor which would enable measuring snow mass and snow water equivalent much more accurately than before.

Juha Muhonen from the University of Jyväskylä aims in his project to implement an optical readout method for measuring spins in silicon. Impurity spins in silicon are one of the most promising platforms for realising qubits, that is, quantum computer bits, for quantum information and quantum sensing applications. By using silicon, the future quantum technology could be produced in the same production methods than current computer processors and memories.

Emilia Peltola from the Aalto University is developing structured carbon nanomaterial electrodes. The results are important for the development of medical methods and for the research of neuroscience. New diagnostic and therapeutic methods are developed to tackle the rapid ageing of the population.