Keyword: Press release

In 2018, the University of Turku received a donation from the Raisio Research Foundation worth of €500,000 for funding the first five years of the professorship in Food Development with special focus on Nordic foods and their health effects. The new professorship focuses on the study of the plants cultivated in Finland, supports the export of Finnish foods that are based on sustainable development, and promotes well-being by advancing the development of healthy foods.

A joint study by the University of Turku and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has shown that the ability of photosynthesising microbial cells to produce biohydrogen from solar energy can be markedly improved by attaching the cells to a transparent nanocellulose film. The method is also expected to enhance the production of other biochemicals from microalgal cells. The results have been published in the prestigious Journal of Materials Chemistry A.

Major companies in the Turku region, Meyer Turku, Elomatic, and Cadmatic support developing the new degree programmes in technology of the University of Turku by donating two professorships.

Rector Jukka Kola has appointed Piia Björn, Mika Hannula and Kalle-Antti Suominen as vice rectors.

The Turku Collegium for Science and Medicine (TCSM) of the University of Turku is a multidisciplinary and interactive researcher community for top researchers at the beginning of their career. The Collegium is looking for a maximum of five postdoctoral researchers and five collegium researchers.

Together with local experts, researchers of the University of Turku, Finland, developed a geospatial mapping method for local level land use planning in Tanzania, based on high-resolution satellite images. Involving the local communities and including their needs in the planning process creates sustainable and transparent practice of spatial planning in Tanzania.

Focal adhesions are known as signalling platforms broadcasting the information of the biochemical and physical qualities of the extracellular matrix into intracellular signalling cascades. However, focal adhesions remain unstudied in the context of human pluripotent stem cells.

An international team of astronomers has used the optical HiPERCAM camera of the Gran Telescopio Canarias in La Palma and NASA’s NICER X-ray observatory aboard the International Space Station to create a video of a growing black hole system at an unprecedented level of detail. The study has increased scientific understanding on the immediate surroundings of black holes.

Researchers have discovered new changes in blood samples which are associated with Alzheimer’s disease. A new international study examined Finnish twins. The study was conducted on disease-discordant twin pairs: one sibling who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and one who was cognitively healthy. The researchers utilised the latest genome-wide methods to find out whether the twins’ blood samples had any disease-related differences in chemical marks, so-called epigenetic marks, which are sensitive to changes in environmental and lifestyle factors.

Scientists at the Biodiversity Unit of the University of Turku have studied the diversity of tropical parasitoid wasps for years. Parasitoid wasps are one of the most species rich animal taxa on Earth, but their tropical diversity is still poorly known. Recently, the research group sampled Afrotropical rhyssine wasps, which are among the largest wasps. Scientists from three countries and research institutes participated in the research which was led by the University of Turku research group.