University of Turku Pentti Malaska Futures Award

The application period for the award will be open during 27 January – 28 April 2025. Applications arriving after the deadline will be ruled out of the competition. 

Application form

The weblink will be available during the application period from 27 January (from 00:01) until 28 April 2025 (until 23:59 EET, UTC +2).

In the application form you will be asked the following questions:

1. Describe the solution you have invented (max. 4000 characters)
   You can attach one document for example an image of the proposed solution (max. 20Mb)
2. Explain how your solution represents sustainable mindset (contribution to further the balance between humankind, technology and nature).
3. Explain how your solution represents visionary thinking (courage to think differently and create radical solutions with long-term futures perspective).
4. Explain how your solution represents academia-business collaboration (cross-sectoral collaboration for solving complex challenges).
5. Explain how your solution represents boundary-crossing approach (crossing boundaries between people, societal sectors, regions etc.).
6. How are you planning to use the €30,000 if you win the Pentti Malaska Futures Award? 

The competition is open for Nordic (Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic) futures researchers and research teams with a future-oriented research approach within any academic field.

By Nordic we refer to Nordic citizens working anywhere in the world or any global citizen working in an institute registered in the Nordic countries. If there are many team members, it is enough that at least one of the team members with a significant contribution to the development of the innovation meets this criteria. 

The new and innovative solutions we are looking for should be based on academic research or be in some other way closely linked to academic world. 

The presented solution must be at the stage where it has already been developed, prototyped, tested and patented, or where the innovation potential of the solution has otherwise been proven. Solutions that are only at the stage of an idea will be excluded from the competition.
 

The best solution will receive the award of €30,000. 

The winner of the award will be announced at the Finland Futures Research Centre’s annual summer conference "Futures of Technologies – Mutual Shaping of Socio-Technical Transformations" organised during 10–12 June 2025 in Turku, Finland. About the conference.

The members of the panel deciding the winner are:

• Markus Granlund (Dean, Turku School of Economics, University of Turku)
• Laura Höijer (Research Director, Ministry of the Environment of Finland)
• Laura Ihanainen (Senior Sustainability Manager, Kesko and Professor of Practice, Department of Marketing, Hanken School of Economics)
• Miia Martinsuo (Professor, Industrial Engineering and Management, Faculty of Technology, University of Turku)
• Soili Mäkinen (SVP Sustainable Business Development, Cargotec, Cargotec Oyj)
• Juha Kaskinen (Director, Finland Futures Research Centre, University of Turku) [Chairman for the jury]

The jury has the right to decide on the distribution of the award in a way that best serves the purpose. In a situation of two or three equal candidates, the award can be divided between them, or if the applications do not fulfill the criteria, the jury has the right to decide not to grant the award.  

The applications are handled with full confidence among the jury members.

The University of Turku Pentti Malaska Futures Award was established in 2017, in the honour of the 25th anniversary of Finland Futures Research Centre (FFRC) at the University of Turku.  

The Award was established with a donation from Medical Counsellor Sakari Alhopuro. Sakari Alhopuro is an alum of the University of Turku, an Honorary Doctor of Turku School of Economics, and a major supporter of entrepreneurship education, research and education in medical technology and health economics, and biodiversity research. 

The Award honours Professor Pentti Malaska’s (1934–2012) lifework in futures research. Pentti Malaska was a professor of business mathematics and statistics (1966–1997) at Turku School of Economics and established the Finland Futures Research Centre in 1992. Malaska was a radical, visionary thinker whose research interests crossed a wide range of academic disciplines from mathematics and electrical engineering to philosophy, ecology and strategic management. His work boldly crossed sectoral boundaries between the academic world, business world and societal influencing. The intellectual biography of Pentti Malaska offers further information about his research. 

The Finland Futures Research Centre of the University of Turku founded in 1992 is a multidisciplinary research, education and development organisation. The Centre produces insightful futures knowledge to promote the transformation towards more ecologically balanced, economically sustainable, and socially and culturally equal futures. The Centre also aims to give tools for responsible decision-making and inspire public debate.

The previous winners of the Futures Award include TM System Finland Oy (2023) for their industrial scale re-circulation Zero-Ex® emission capture technology, Woodio Ltd. (2021) that develops ecological waterproof solid wood composite, and Solar Foods Ltd (2019) that developed a new kind of nutritious protein by utilising air and electricity. The first award was granted to EnviRate in 2017 for developing a mobile application for assessing the state of the environment.

The organiser has the right to exclude a competition participant if the participant is violating the competition rules or Finnish laws.

The organiser has the right to publish the names of participants and the synopses of the competition proposals on its internal and external websites. However, the disclosure may not happen before the jury has announced the award-winning team. The disclosure is made in co-operation with the participants, so that they accept the content of published material and ensure that the material does not contain any business ideas or secrets they do not wish to publish. The organiser has the right to agree on the published content with the appointed contact person of a participating team.

Intellectual property rights to the competition proposals belong to the participants. The organiser shall not be held liable for any damage caused concerning intellectual property rights or other direct or indirect damage the competition might cause to participants or third parties. 

The organiser has the right to change the rules of the competition during the competition (e.g. any schedule changes). These changes will be published on the competition website. The participating teams are obligated to follow the competition website in order to notice possible changes. The processing of personal data of the participants is done in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1050/2018.

Privacy Statement.  

Members of the teams participating in the competition give their consent to the fact that their personal information shall be processed by the organiser. Competition participants agree that the organiser has the right to publish the names of participating team members and the synopsis of the competition proposal on its internal and external websites.

Competition participants are responsible for the correctness of the information they deliver to the organiser. Participants are responsible for ensuring that they provide a competition proposal that does not infringe third party intellectual property rights or other rights. Intellectual property rights to the proposals belong to the competition participants. If demands concerning the intellectual property rights to certain competition entries are presented to the organisers, the participants in question are required to meet the demands at their own expense. 

The award-winning team has the obligation to find out the tax duties associated with prize. The organiser is not obligated to figure out the fiscal statuses of the participants, nor to pay any other payments than the mentioned award sum of €30,000.