Six top scientists from the Ä¢¹½Ö±²¥ chosen as new members of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters

The Finnish Academy of Science and Letters has invited six new members from the Ä¢¹½Ö±²¥: Professor Tuomas Lappi, Professor Robert van Leeuwen, Professor Tapio Mappes and Professor Heikki M. Tuononen from the Faculty of Mathematics and Science and Professor Juha-Antti Lamberg from the Jyväskylä University School of Business and Economics and Professor, Academy Professor Pasi Ihalainen from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. The Academy has over 800 Finnish members and 180 external members who represent the very top in their profession.
Published
27.4.2021





Professor of Theoretical Particle Physics Tuomas Lappi studies the interactions of the smallest constituents of ordinary matter, quarks and gluons. His research has focused on the behavior of gluons in the highest energy particle collisions, and in particular on the formation of quark gluon plasma. The quark gluon plasma is a form of matter consisting of deconfined quarks and gluons, and it can be produced in the largest particle accelerators in the world.

Lappi has published over 120 international peer reviewed publications. In 2014 Lappi was awarded the Zimanyi Nuclear Theory Award, given to a young researcher working on the theory of high energy heavy ion collisions "whose research in the field of theoretical high-energy nuclear physics has achieved important international recognition and impact".

He was an Academy of Finland Research Fellow in 2013-2018. Tuomas Lappi was awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant by the European Research Council for 2016-2021.

Key advances in the development of diagrammatic perturbation theory and time-dependent density functional theory

Robert van Leeuwen is Professor in theoretical physics at the Ä¢¹½Ö±²¥. His interests concern all theoretical and mathematical aspects of quantum many-body theory with a focus on non-equilibrium many-particle systems and connections to electronic structure theory for molecules and solids. He has made key advances in the development of diagrammatic perturbation theory and time-dependent density functional theory and is author of a popular graduate level textbook on non-equilibrium many-body theory of quantum systems.
Currently he is writing a new textbook on density functional theory and is expanding his research in the study of strongly correlated materials.

He obtained his PhD degree from the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, was Marie-Curie Fellow at the University of Lund and an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the University of Würzburg before attaining an assistant professorship supported by the Dutch Foundation of the Fundamental Research of Matter at the University of Groningen. Since 2009 he has been appointed full professor at the Ä¢¹½Ö±²¥ and in the years 2019-2020 he was a visiting professor at Sorbonne University in Paris.

Exploring how wild animals adapt to a changing environment

Professor of animal ecology Tapio Mappes specialises in the study of evolutionary ecology, with the goal of predicting mechanisms that guide animal adaptation and development under different environmental conditions.

With his research team he is carrying out extensive field experiments in which researchers are testing how e.g. urbanization, climate change and pollution are effecting on wildlife populations. Experiments are being carried out in the nuclear affected areas of Chernobyl and Fukushima, among others.

Professor Mappes has worked at the Ä¢¹½Ö±²¥ as an Academy Fellow and as a Research Fellow of Academy of Finland from 1995 to 2008. He was a deputy professor from 2010 to 2014 and a University Lecturer from 2014 to 2020.
Mappes has been an expert on several international funding search and radiation ecological organizations. He was a member of the executive teams in two Centers of Excellence of Academy of Finland in 2000-2011. He has published 120 peer-reviewed scientific articles, among several published in top series.

Research with the aim to find new precursors for the synthesis of novel functional materials

The research of chemistry Professor Heikki M. Tuononen focuses on inorganic chemistry and the chemistry of main group compounds in particular. He has investigated, for example, stable main group radicals and their metal complexes, as well as the reaction mechanisms of main group compounds.
The research employs both computational and experimental methods with the aim to find new precursors for the synthesis of novel functional materials and to understand the ability of main group systems to activate small molecules such as hydrogen and carbon dioxide.

Professor Tuononen has published over 110 research papers in international peer-reviewed chemistry journals, including Science and Nature Chemistry. In 2014, he received the Ingrid and Sten Ahrland prize from the Royal Physiographic Society of Lund, and in 2018 he was awarded by Visiting Scholarship from the University of Calgary Killam Trusts.

Professor Tuononen has worked as an Academy of Finland Postdoctoral Researcher in 2008–2010 and as an Academy Research Fellow in 2011–2015. He received the prestigious ERC Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council for years 2018–2023.

Focus on the history of strategy, competitiveness, and industry evolution

Juha-Antti Lamberg is a Professor of Strategy and Economic History at the Ä¢¹½Ö±²¥. His research has focused on the history of strategy, competitiveness, and industry evolution. He has published research in the Academy of Management Review, Strategic Management Journal, Organization Science, Industrial and Corporate Change, Business History, as well as other leading journals of the field.

In recognition of quality of his research, Lamberg has won the Sloan Foundation’s Industry Studies Best Paper Prize in 2008, the Carolyn Dexter Award in 2009 at the Academy of Management Conference, and the Outstanding Article of the Year at the Academy of Management Learning & Education in 2015.

Lamberg has visited and conducted research at several top European universities. Before returning to the Ä¢¹½Ö±²¥ in 2011, Lamberg worked as a researcher in several research projects funded by the Academy of Finland and as a professor of strategic management at the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management at the Helsinki University of Technology (later Aalto University).

Professor Lamberg has served as a board member and advisor to several scientific organizations and companies, and is an active influencer on issues related to industry evolution and strategic management.

Towards an understanding of democracy, nationalism an internationalism through European history

Pasi Ihalainen, Professor of Comparative European History, studies political representation or tensions between parliament and the people between the eighteenth and twenty-first centuries. The Academy of Finland has nominated Ihalainen Academy Professor for the period 1 September 2021 to 31 August 2026.

Ihalainen’s topic of research is historical and present-day ways to construe, challenge and create legitimacy for parliamentary decision-making through discourses on popular sovereignty and representation. His multidisciplinary research team combines distant and close reading to analyse and compare digitised parliamentary data from ten European countries.

Ihalainen has also studied the history of pluralism, nationalism and internationalism. He has published 13 monographs and has altogether 142 publications. He has previously led three academy projects and visited the Universities of Freiburg, Gothenburg, Leiden and Uppsala. He belongs to the boards of European Information and Research Network on Parliamentary History and Association for Political History.

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