Copy of email: FW: 2020 November Networking – ALD at Aalto University: registration open (with presentation, until 11.11.)

(Copy of email sent to previous year’s participants, November Networking – ALD at Aalto University.)

From: Puurunen Riikka <>
Sent: maanantai 2. marraskuuta 2020 15.53
To: Puurunen Riikka <>
Subject: 2020 November Networking – ALD at Aalto University: registration open (with presentation, until 11.11.)

Dear participant of the 2019 “November Networking – ALD at Aalto University” event,

“November Networking – ALD at Aalto University” will be organized again.

Information of this year’s online event, along with registration link, can be found in: https://www.aalto.fi/en/events/2020-november-networking-ald-at-aalto-university. With presentations, registrations are welcome until 11.11.2020. Without presentations, registration ends 22.11.2020. Registration is free but required.

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Posted by Riikka Puurunen

Associate professor, Catalysis Science and Technology, at Aalto since February 2017
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Registration open for 2020 November Networking – ALD at Aalto University

Continuing the tradition (?) started in 2019, a networking event will be organized around atomic layer deposition (ALD): 2020 November Networking – ALD at Aalto University. The event will take place on November 25 and 26, 2020.

Due to COVID-19, in 2020, the event will be fully online in Zoom. The program will be in two parts:

  • Part 1: Public webinar is open for anyone to attend and has high-level invited speakers: Dr. Jonas Sundqvist, Dr. Tuomo Suntola and Dr. Angel Yanguas-Gil. Additionally, there will be tutorials by Prof. Riikka Puurunen and Prof. Matti Putkonen. (See the webpage & program for details.)
  • Part 2: Local networking is aimed for local (Finland-based) participants. The core of  Part 2 will be an online poster session where submissions from doctoral students, postdocs and other researchers are welcome. Additionally, there will be brief introductions to research groups, companies and projects, and a presentation by Prof. Timo Sajavaara on the characterization of ALD films. For the poster session we hope to create an online experience that resembles a regular conference’s poster session – let’s see how we manage!

The registration link and all related info, including a preliminary program, are found in the event website: https://www.aalto.fi/en/events/2020-november-networking-ald-at-aalto-university. Registration was opened on 21.10.2020 and will close for participation with presentation on 11.11.2020 and for participation without presentation 22.11.2020.

Welcome!

Riikka Puurunen (responsible organizer)

Posted by Riikka Puurunen

Associate professor, Catalysis Science and Technology, at Aalto since February 2017
atomic layer deposition , events - Comments Off on Registration open for 2020 November Networking – ALD at Aalto University

History of ALD – ALD stories podcast Episode 2 with Riikka Puurunen

On October 16, 2020, ALD stories podcast Episode 2 was published, where I (Riikka Puurunen) had an honor of being interviewed by Lie Luo and Patrick Gonzalez of Beneq.

Episode 2 is about the history of atomic layer deposition (ALD), but also other things dear to my heart. Mentioned are for example: conformality; catalysis; 40 Years of ALD in Finland – Photos, Stories (FinALD40 exhibition); Baltic ALD 2014 conference; story of Suntola’s atomic layer epitaxy; two almost parallel inventions of ALD; Beneq applab opening in St. Petersburg 2013; molecular layering; 1st international conference on atomic layer epitaxy 1990; international ALD conference; November Networking – ALD at Aalto University; Millennium Technology Prize; Virtual Project on the History of ALD; ALD window; misconception of full monolayer growth per cycle for ideal ALD; conformality test concept & saturation profile & lumped sticking coefficient.

Persons mentioned, at least: Outi Krause, Suvi Haukka, Tuomo Suntola, Sven Lindfors, Arto Pakkala, Victor Drozd, Valentin Aleskovskii, Angel Yanguas-Gil, Jonas Sundqvist.

Companies mentioned, at least: Microchemistry, Neste, Beneq, Lohja, Picosun.

The podcast is available in at least via:

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Posted by Riikka Puurunen

Associate professor, Catalysis Science and Technology, at Aalto since February 2017
atomic layer deposition , openness - Comments Off on History of ALD – ALD stories podcast Episode 2 with Riikka Puurunen

Yaseen Khan doctoral defence 25.9.2020, Prof. Lars Pettersson opponent with invited talk 24.9.2020

M.Sc. Yaseen Khan will defend his doctoral thesis “Structured Microreactors for the Heterogeneously Catalyzed Gas-phase Dehydration and Partial Oxidation of 1-butanol” at Aalto University, School of Chemical Engineering, on September 25, 2020, at 13 Finnish time.  The Aalto University event page containing more information, including the Zoom link (to appear) to participate in the event, is: https://www.aalto.fi/en/events/defence-of-dissertation-in-the-field-of-chemical-engineering-msc-yaseen-khan.

Prof. Lars Pettersson from Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan, Stockholm, Sweden, will act as opponent. Prof. Lars J. Pettersson has 30 years of experience in green chemical processing, fuel upgrading and catalysis for automotive applications, high temperature catalytic combustion, hydrogen generation from conventional and renewable fuels and novel catalytic reactor designs, preparation of heterogeneous catalysts and processing of oil fractions into more environmentally-friendly products. More information in: https://www.kth.se/ket/process-technology/ljp/lars-j-pettersson-1.31564

On the day before the defense, September 24, 2020, at 11:00 Finnish time, the opponent will give an invited talk, entitled “Deactivation of automotive catalysts for biofuel-powered heavy-duty trucks”.  The interested persons can follow the presentation at https://aalto.zoom.us/j/65482221160.

Looking forward to an interesting presentation and doctoral thesis defense!

 

Posted by Riikka Puurunen

Associate professor, Catalysis Science and Technology, at Aalto since February 2017
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New Zenodo community! ALD saturation profile open data. Ideas? Questions?

Yesterday, I created a new Zenodo community: “ALD saturation profile open data”, https://zenodo.org/communities/ald-saturation-profile-open-data/. In my research group, we intend to use this first for sharing experimental saturation profile data related to a publication we are writing (access through the ChemRxiv, https://doi.org/10.26434/chemrxiv.12366623).

Before we are so far that we can actually deposit open data there, we know that there are many things to solve. I anticipate also that we will run into new questions, of which we were not aware yet.

I understand that others may have interest also for this open science community. It came to mind, that now could be a good time to do some collective thinking on how to progress. To do so, I created an open file Google Docs file, to collect ideas and questions by different people together.

Below you find the text I wrote for the document (introductory part). read more >>

Posted by Riikka Puurunen

Associate professor, Catalysis Science and Technology, at Aalto since February 2017
atomic layer deposition , openness - Comments Off on New Zenodo community! ALD saturation profile open data. Ideas? Questions?

Virtual guest speaker with Bent group Stanford – other groups interested in an ALD fundamentals talk?

Yesterday, I participated a Prof. Bent group meeting (Stanford), giving again the presentation we gave jointly with Prof. Ruud van Ommen at the recent ALD conference (see previous post), entitled “On the fundamentals of ALD: the importance of getting the picture right”.

It was a pleasure and honor for me to be invited as a virtual guest speaker in the Bent group. Nice, lively and useful discussion on the fundamentals of ALD followed — thank you very much for everyone who was present! Special thanks to Josiah Yarbrough who invited me in the first place.

The discussion was so useful that it came to my mind: I could do this again. Would some other group in the world wish to have a similar “virtual ALD fundamentals visit” from me (or perhaps from Ruud van Ommen)? I’d be happy to meet e.g. via Zoom.  read more >>

Posted by Riikka Puurunen

Associate professor, Catalysis Science and Technology, at Aalto since February 2017
atomic layer deposition , openness , teaching - Comments Off on Virtual guest speaker with Bent group Stanford – other groups interested in an ALD fundamentals talk?

“On the fundamentals of ALD: the importance of getting the picture right” – by Puurunen and van Ommen

Jointly with Prof. Ruud van Ommen, I (Prof. Riikka Puurunen) gave a presentation at the AVS 20th International Conference on Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD 2020) featuring the 7th International Atomic Layer Etching Workshop (ALE 2020), adapted into a Virtual Meeting, Jun 29 – Jul 1, 2020, https://ald2020.avs.org, aimed to initiate/contribute to discussion of the fundamentals in the field of atomic layer deposition (ALD).

Please find the abstract of the presentation in this blog post, below. Once the slides and video record of the talk are openly available, the purpose is to link them to this post, too.

Title: On the fundamentals of ALD: the importance of getting the picture right 
Authors: Riikka L. Puurunen and J. Ruud van Ommen
Session: Precursors and Chemistry: Simulation, Modeling, and Theory of ALD

Abstract Text:
Atomic layer deposition (ALD) has become of global importance as a fundamental building block for example in semiconductor device fabrication, and also gained more visibility (e.g., the Millennium Technology Prize 2018). In recent years, the number of ALD processes has increased, new groups have entered the field, and fundamental insights have been gained. At the same time, significantly varying views exist in the field related to the description and meaningfulness of some core ALD concepts. Open, respectful but critical scientific discussion would be needed around these concepts – for example at this AVS ALD/ALE conference, the world’s largest conference on ALD. read more >>

Posted by Riikka Puurunen

Associate professor, Catalysis Science and Technology, at Aalto since February 2017
atomic layer deposition - Comments Off on “On the fundamentals of ALD: the importance of getting the picture right” – by Puurunen and van Ommen

Three years as a tenure track professor at Aalto University

Three years ago, I started at Aalto University as professor (associate professor, catalysis science and technology). I started in February 2017, and worked 60% of time for the first half year, being at my former employer VTT for 40%.

In this post, I look back at my three first years as a professor and try to create an overview of the most important things that have taken place. When I had been at Aalto University of one year, I wrote a similar blog post, reflecting on the status then; those who are interested, can access it here.

The past three years have been years of continuous change. After three years, change seems only to continue. I look to the future with an optimistic mindset, advocating (also with this publication) what has in essence become my motto: “more openness in science and education”. Fits nicely in Aalto University’s new strategy, too.

Espoo, Finland, 3.2.2020

Riikka Puurunen

— Puurunen’s three-year professor summary begins —

Among the most important tasks of a professor is – to acquire research funding. Without funding, one cannot hire people to work in the group, and little progress can happen. That professors acquire competed funding is not only important for the functioning one’s own group but for the whole university, as overheads of the projects help pay university-level costs. Most funding applications do not get funded – depending on the call, even less than 10% of applications may get funded.

My major funding applications of three years in a nutshell: read more >>

Posted by Riikka Puurunen

Associate professor, Catalysis Science and Technology, at Aalto since February 2017
openness , Uncategorized - Comments Off on Three years as a tenure track professor at Aalto University

Season’s greetings and Happy 2020 from Aalto Catalysis group

Dear colleagues, collaborators, emeriti, old and potential future colleagues and collaborators,

Year 2019 approaches its end, and it is a good time to look back on the activities of the Aalto Catalysis group in the past year.

A slogan for the undersigned and the Catalysis group this year has been “more openness in science and teaching”. The quest for more openness resulted in a nice recognition with Aalto CHEM’s award Educational action of the year 2019 for online lecture recordings. There is more on the justification (directly by students!), background and extended thanks related to the recognition in a recent blog post in Catalysis Professor’s Open: https://blogs.aalto.fi/catprofopen/2019/12/13/online-lecture-recordings-are-educational-action-of-the-year-2019-aalto-chem/.  We will continue to work for more openness in science and teaching in 2020.

Publication-wise, year 2019 has been nice for the group. read more >>

Posted by Riikka Puurunen

Associate professor, Catalysis Science and Technology, at Aalto since February 2017
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Online lecture recordings awarded as Educational action of the year 2019, Aalto CHEM

On December 12, at Dean’s Glögg event, several recognitions were shared at Aalto University School of Chemical Engineering (Aalto CHEM). I (Riikka Puurunen) was among the happy ones to receive a recognition this year – together with Lauri Partanen – for the use of online lecture recordings in education.

The grounds for the recognition were as follows:

Teaching act of the year 2019

Grounds and reasoning for award from students:

Digitalisation is continuously discussed as bring of ever-increasing importance, and this also applies to the field of education. With complex topics, it is vital that students are able to study lecture material at their own pace as many times as needed. Additionally, the ability to miss lectures when sick or otherwise occupied helps to reduce stress related to studies and ultimately to achieve a successful course. Therefore, on behalf of students, we would like to nominate “online lecture recordings” as Teaching Action of the Year. This includes a special mention to both Riikka Puurunen and Lauri Partanen, who have respectively championed in their Master’s and Bachelor’s courses with high quality online record lecture material.

  • Prof. Puurunen uses and actively tries out new methods in her teaching. Examples about this are lecture recordings made with Panopto, which enable (re)doing the lectures afterwards. In addition to this, on her MSc Catalysis course she did a video of the derivation of Langmuir isotherm with the “digital chalkboard” lightboard. The teaching material is also openly shared via a blog and a YouTube channel.
  • Lauri Partanen has used many digital teaching methods on his course “Kemiallinen termodynamiikka”. He has added video recordings of his teaching sessions made with Panopto. He has used online quiz questions during his teaching sessions to support learning. He has also created a Telegram group, where students can ask him questions related to the course and give feedback. Getting feedback in this quick and easy way has allowed him to make changes already during the course.

Related Aalto CHEM news item: https://www.aalto.fi/en/news/teaching-achievement-of-the-year-awarded-to-lecture-recordings.

In the description, students referred to the MSc Catalysis course, a blog, and to a Youtube channel. Here, I want to tell a bit more of each item.
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Posted by Riikka Puurunen

Associate professor, Catalysis Science and Technology, at Aalto since February 2017
learning , openness , teaching - Comments Off on Online lecture recordings awarded as Educational action of the year 2019, Aalto CHEM