Author Archives: Sami Vuori

IMC’s hackmanite research gets country-wide attention in two major newspapers

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We wrote a press release based on our hackmanite research article in the high-impact Chemistry of Materials journal. The news was published on University of Turku’s website, and it spread instantly to Finland’s biggest newspaper Helsingin Sanomat and also to a Turku-based newspaper Aamuset:

Tutkijat selvittivät, miksi luonnonkivi loistaa pimeässä – Hackmaniitin ytimessä hehkuu titaani – Helsingin Sanomat 23/10/2020

Pimeässä loistavan luonnonkiven salaisuus selvisi tuoreessa tutkimuksessa – Aamuset 23/10/2020

IMC theme song video!

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To celebrate the five-year anniversary of Inorganic Materials Chemistry group at the University of Turku – and to pass the time during these social distancing times – we created the IMC theme song. The current IMC group and alumni joined forces to bring you joy in the darkening autumn of Finland. Enjoy! Warning: flashy lights and fast images!

Newspaper article: IMC face masks

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Turun Sanomat, the biggest local newspaper, asked for photos of readers’ face masks. We saw an opportunity there to show our new face masks with our logo on them:

“Sami Vuori from the chemistry department of University of Turku’s says: “We ordered our research group (Inorganic Materials Chemistry research group, IMC) face masks with our logo on them.

Digital Kemian kevät presentation event was a success

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Last week the chemistry department held its traditional annual 3-day Kemian kevät event which is for the BSc and MSc students’ presentations. This year, however, was a historical one since the whole event was held on the Zoom platform. Although there were doubts whether the platform could bear more than a hundred participants, the whole event went very smoothly without any technical issues. The digital Kemian kevät event was a real success and showed what a versatile mentality our students, professors, teachers and staff have. All thanks go to everyone who took part in creating and participating this event. Good job everyone! The screenshot below is from our MSc student Kirsi Miller‘s presentation.

Mela’s communications team’s visit

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Today we had a communications team from The Farmers’ Social Insurance Institution Mela taking photos of IMC’s laboratories. The people admiring the IMC’s Chemistree, from left to right: Mela’s Mikko Käkelä and Julia von Flittner and our Adjunct Professor Ari Lehtonen. Missing from the photo: Mela’s Virve Laine and the mannequin, PhD student Sami Vuori. The stock photos will be published later, so stay tuned!

Hannah wins best poster award at FyFa symposium

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The 31st symposium of the Finnish Society of Physical Pharmacy (FyFa) was held on February 13th–14th, 2020 in Hotel Arthur in Helsinki. IMC’s representation consisted of Adj. Prof. Mika Lastusaari in the arranging team and PhD student Hannah Byron giving both an oral and a poster presentation.

Everything went exceptionally well, and Hannah also won the Finnish Pharmaceutical Society’s best poster award (200 €)!

The theme of the symposium this year was Trends of Thermoanalytical Methods in Materials Characterization, and Hannah’s topic was Thermoluminescence of hackmanites produced using a zeolite-free method.

Hannah giving her oral presentation Thermoluminescence of hackmanites produced using a zeolite-free method. Photo by João Pedro Martins.
Photo by João Pedro Martins.
Hannah invited on stage for the best poster award by the chairpersons of FyFa, Emma Hokkala, and FinTAC, Vesa-Pekka Lehto. Photo by João Pedro Martins.

Felix Memmel from the University of Würzburg

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MSc student Felix Memmel from the University of Würzburg in Germany is doing a part of his exchange period at IMC. He came to Finland after hearing good recommendations about this country from a PhD student who had his exchange period in Joensuu. Especially Finns’ English skills were a definite pro when considering an exchange country.

Wurzburg location
Würzburg’s location

Felix’s major is inorganic chemistry, and he will be synthesizing some tungsten compounds first under Ari’s supervision, and when ready, will move on to create some luminescent materials in Mika’s group. He will be in the lab for 8 weeks, and we warmly welcome him to conduct his experiments!

Gathering for Pasi’s research visit to Austria

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Yesterday Pasi Salonen held a small gathering for his last day before leaving for a research visit to Graz, Austria. Pasi is confident to gather vital data for his PhD thesis and was, as many members of the team, especially excited to go to the place where Arnold Schwarzenegger is from. We wish him a pleasant stay in Graz, and as Pasi himself stated, we’ll see in no time! Hasta la vista!

GlowTrack kickoff meeting in Tampere

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On Friday, Jan 10, 2020 we held the kickoff meeting for the Academy of Finland-funded GlowTrack project in the beautiful city of Tampere. We were warmly welcomed by the people of Tampere University: we had a tour in the laboratory facilities, discussed about ice hockey and had a mutual agreement on how to proceed with the project. We will eagerly be executing it in collaboration with the Tampere team.

From left to right: Adj. Prof. Mika Lastusaari (University of Turku), DI Agata Szczodra (Tampere University) , Assoc. Prof. Laeticia Petit (Tampere University), PhD Alexander Veber (Tampere University), MSc Sami Vuori (University of Turku) and Assoc. Prof. Jonathan Massera (Tampere University).