A sad part of blogging are spam comments. Screen capture of the latest portion of spam comments below. It would be great if there was less of these, or if I would not need to mark them individually as spam…
Interestingly, although there has also been some spam in my other blog, the ALD History Blog (made with Blogger, while Catalysis Professor’s Open is made with WordPress), spam has not been a big of an issue there.
Thank you for the professors’ photography session in April 2018, Anni Hanén, Mikko Raskinen, Aalto University.
Finalised photos, in full resolution, available at: http://materialbank.aalto.fi:80/public/2c71ee1bc8FE.aspx.
A radio podcast to explain catalysis and its importance to a broader public has recently been made by journalist Mari Heikkilä. In the podcast, professors at the University of Jyväskylä, Prof. Karoliina Honkala and Prof. Petri Pihko, are interviewed. The podcast lasts for 46 min and is currently available without end date. A recommended listening (in Finnish) to all from my part.
Related links:
From: Puurunen Riikka Sent: 6. maaliskuuta 2018 11:18 To: Puurunen Riikka <> Subject: Aalto Catalysis Professor’s Update 1/2018
Dear doctoral students and their advisors,
With this email, I would like to update you with information related to some events and courses to be organized in the next weeks and months potentially relevant to your doctoral studies.
I would especially like to draw your attention to two events: Finnish Young Scientist Forum on Catalysis (FYSFC2018) in April 6 in Espoo and Nordic Symposium on Catalysis in Copenhagen in August.
(1) The Finnish Young Scientist Forum on Catalysis will be organized on April 6, 2018 with the goal to bring together people in Finland interested in the field of catalysis and to provide an opportunity especially for doctoral students to present their work in an oral presentation. This is an event by the Finnish Catalysis Society and will be organized for the third time; this year, I am functioning as the main local organizer. In addition to contributed talks (and this year some posters, too), the event has a high-level plenary lecture: EFCATS Francois Gault Lectureship holder Prof. Krijn de Jong from Utrecht University. With this email, I want to invite all my doctoral students and their advisors to attend the event. Registration deadline is March 16; a small participation fee (40 EUR) is collected to cover the costs (auditorium, lunch, coffee, etc). read more >>
The next Nordic Symposium on Catalysis will be organised in Copenhagen, Denmark, August 26-28, 2018.
Copied from the conference website: http://www.conferencemanager.dk/NSC2018:
“The NSC conference series is biannual and organized within the Nordic Catalysis Society framework. The aim of the conference is to create a breeding ground for ideas by ensuring meetings between researchers and catalyst developers, from academy as well as industry, within all aspects of catalysis. The conference will cover catalysis broadly and will be organized with plenary lectures, Berzelius lecture and parallel sessions with Nordic keynote lectures and accepted oral contributions covering aspects from theory and modelling to applied science and engineering. The conference language will be English.”
Deadline for abstract submission is April 1, 2018. I plan to attend the conference myself and I hope that there will be many colleagues from Finland joining, of course with presentations of their works.
According to the conference website, there will be a special issue in the peer-reviewed journal Topics in Catalysis, where manuscripts on the basis of accepted conference contributions can be submitted as articles.
Prof. Tapio Salmi and colleagues will again organise a course “Computer-aided chemical reaction engineering (CACRE 2018)” on May 28 to June 5, 2018, in Turku/Åbo. The course is worth of 8 credits (ECTS) and can be included in doctoral studies.
The course has earlier been taken by many doctoral students at Aalto University. The overall experiences of the courses, as have been shared to me by past students, have been highly positive. I warmly recommend the course to doctoral students interested in kinetic modelling of chemical reactions.
Related to the Academy of Finland funded MICATOX project, which ended in 2017, a seminar will be organized by our project colleagues in Åbo Akademi with leadership by Prof. Tapio Salmi: Finnish Microreactor Symposium: Microreactors – the great scientific and industrial future.
The seminar will be organized on Tuesday, March 13, 2018. Åbo Akademi, Chemical Engineering, Piispankatu/Biskopsgatan 8, Axelia building, Auditorium Ringbom, 2nd Floor.
The seminar is open for all interested persons to attend. Please confirm your attendance by e-mail to Dr Kari Eränen, kari.eranen <at> abo.fi (remove the spaces) latest on March 9th.
Programme read more >>
Finnish Catalysis Society http://www.katalyysiseura.org/ organizes on April 6th the Finnish Young Scientist Forum on Catalysis (FYSFC), starting at 10:00, in Dipole. Conference information is updated in our group’s website in: http://cmet.aalto.fi/en/research/industrial_chemistry_catalysis/young_scientist_forum_2018/.
The plenary speaker will be Prof. Krijn De Jong, Utrecht University, The Netherlands, EFCATS Francois Gault lecturer: “Effects of size and location of metal nanoparticles in catalysis”. The lecture is simultaneously part of Aalto course CHEM-1140 (Catalysis for Bimass Refining). After the young scientist forum, there will be have the annual meeting of the Finnish Catalysis Society.
FYSFC will now be organized for the third time. The fundamental goal behind the event is to gather together scientists in the field of catalysis in Finland. Applying the same practices as in the annual seminars of Finnish graduate schools, we offer all doctoral students <on catalysis> a forum to present their research. In 2018, you can request to present your work as:
Registration is now open; please register through the following link latest on March 16: https://eage.aalto.fi/?fs/YSF. Please prepare to fill in the title of your presentation and presentation highlights as bullet points (max 300 words). (Students of the CHEM-1140 course will be advised to register for the Prof. De Jong lecture through other means later.)
Twitter: #FYSFC2018, see also: #FinCatSoc
As mentioned in the Open Positions tab in our website, we will are looking for (currently two) summer trainees to my Catalysis group. I am copying our advertisement below in full.
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Summer trainee positions 23.2.2018
The research group of Catalysis by Prof. Riikka Puurunen is looking for summer trainees.
We offer to you:
We expect from you:
I started to work as a tenure track professor at Aalto University in February 2017. Initially, I was working part time (60%) during a half-year transition period (the rest I worked at VTT), and since August, full time. As one full year is gone, it is a good time to look back.
The first year as a professor at Aalto University has been buzy and interesting.
I currently have a nice small research group with one postdoc/university lecturer and three excellent doctoral candidates. In addition to the doctoral candidates at Aalto University, I am supervising several doctoral candidates outside Aalto University who work with catalysis-related subjects; the total number of doctoral students under my supervision is currently ten. This spring I will supervise at least four Master of Science theses of Aalto University, one of which is made in our laboratory and three are made outside Aalto University. I have recruited one postdoctoral student (we got more than a hundred applications!) who will start in March. Discussions are further going on with two persons who would like to come to do their M.Sc. thesis for other European universities under my guidance.
My teaching responsibilities currently comprise:
In addition to taking care of the group duties and teaching, my first year has comprised participating in conferences (also on the organizing side), doctoral defence-related activities (being a custos (supervising professor) and an opponent), participating in the activities of the Finnish Catalysis Society and in the Council of the European Federation of Catalysis Societies (EFCATS), taking an introductory pedagogical course, and preparing funding applications. And of course taking part in internal Aalto activities, as professors are expected.
The first year has been of a continuous change, and I don’t expect the second to be any different in this respect. I am looking forward to and curious of how the second year will be as a tenure track professor at Aalto University.
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