Accelerating Sustainable Nordic Innovation and Commercialization
Finland has pledged to be carbon neutral by 2035. Helsinki’s pledge is set for 2030. Most organizations and states have made pledges that materialize decades away. Finland is therefore leading the way in these important commitments, crucial to fight the existential threat of climate change. Constant innovation, coupled with rapid commercialization, are key to the success of these ambitious goals. Great challenges abound, and these are coupled with numerous opportunities for profitable business outcomes for Finnish companies – opportunities that are not limited to Finland but applicable around the globe.
The MIT Industrial Liaison Program and the MIT Startup Exchange, in collaboration with Aalto University, are conducting a one-day symposium at the Dipoli center in the heart of the university campus. MIT and Aalto University faculty and startups, as well as representatives from Finnish industry, will discuss the business and technology challenges needed to further accelerate sustainable innovation. Launching and commercializing these innovations quickly will ensure that Finnish companies and institutions establish a leadership role in the crucial decades ahead.
As our keynote presentation, Prof. Carlo Ratti will discuss his team’s project, Helsinki’s Hot Heart, award winner of the 2021 Helsinki Energy Challenge. The project is an innovative and transformative energy storage system to provide district heating to the city. The MIT-Aalto Symposium will be an opportunity for the Finnish business community to interact directly with Prof. Ratti on this venture, intimately linked to life in Helsinki. Participants from the business community will also be able to engage with other faculty presenters, startups and with each other, an unusual occurrence in the past two years.
MIT Professional Education and Aalto University Executive Education will also offer opportunities for continued engagement and learning for the Finnish corporate community.
All times listed below are Eastern European Summer Time (UTC+3).
The Aalto University Foundation Board appointed Professor, D.Sc. (Tech.) Ilkka Niemelä to another term as President of Aalto University. The term is five years and starts on 1 July 2022. Niemelä is the second President of Aalto University, starting in the role in 2017.
Niemelä served prior to his term as President as Provost at Aalto University from 2014. Niemelä was appointed Professor of Computer Science at Helsinki University of Technology in 2000, as Dean of the Aalto University School of Science from 2011 and as the University’s Vice President responsible for academic affairs and Deputy President since 2012. His international experience includes visiting posts in Australia, Germany and USA. He also holds several academic positions of trust.
Jukka Mäkelä is a Finnish politician and the current mayor of Espoo, Finland’s second largest city. Espoo is home to numerous tech companies and businesses, and has a strong reputation as a very important centre of research and development in Scandinavia. Mayor Mäkelä has been leading Espoo since 2011 and has done a lot to further improve Espoo’s image of a tech hub and a city with a strong emphasis on sustainability.
John Roberts has been Executive Director of MIT Corporate Relations (Interim) since February 2022. He obtained his Ph.D. in organic chemistry at MIT and returned to the university after a 20-year career in the pharmaceutical industry, joining the MIT Industrial Liaison Program (ILP) in 2013. Prior to his return, John worked at small, medium, and large companies, holding positions that allowed him to exploit his passions in synthetic chemistry, project leadership, and alliance management while growing his responsibilities for managing others, ultimately as a department head. As a program director at MIT, John built a portfolio of ILP member companies, mostly in the pharmaceutical industry and headquartered in Japan, connecting them to engagement opportunities in the MIT community. Soon after returning to MIT, John began to lead a group of program directors with a combined portfolio of 60-80 global companies. In his current role, John oversees MIT Corporate Relations which houses ILP and MIT Startup Exchange.
José Ramos comes to CR from OSRAM (R&D), where he was Head of Engineering and Business Development at Innovation Americas. In his role at OSRAM, Ramos was a strong proponent of the ILP, attended many of our events, and experienced first-hand the OSRAM-ILP relationship. Before OSRAM, Ramos was Project Developer at NORESCO/United Technologies in Westborough, MA, where he managed engineering, sales, marketing, financial and legal teams to implement sustainability projects for industrial, commercial, and institutional customers in the US and the Caribbean. Before that, Ramos was an independent technology consultant for many years focused on Spanish-speaking markets. Ramos has also held positions as Lecturer at MIT (Spanish), Engineering Manager (Shooshanian Engineering), and Mechanical Engineer for Central America and Caribbean projects (Stone & Webster).
Ramos earned a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering at MIT and a Master of Arts in Spanish at Boston College. He also completed a one-year Icelandic language program at the University of Reykjavik.
Michael Schrage is a research fellow with the MIT Sloan School of Management's Initiative on the Digital Economy. His research, writing, and advisory work focuses on the behavioral economics of models, prototypes, and metrics as strategic resources for managing innovation risk and opportunity. He is author of the award-winning book The Innovator’s Hypothesis (MIT Press, 2014), Who Do You Want Your Customers to Become? (Harvard Business Review Press, 2012), and Serious Play (Harvard Business Review Press, 2000). His latest book, Recommendation Engines, was published in September 2020 by MIT Press as part of its Essential Knowledge series. He's done consulting and advisory work for Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, British Telecom, BP, Siemens, Embraer, Google, iRise, the Office of Net Assessment, and other organizations
Schrage has run design workshops and executive education programs on innovation, experimentation, and strategic measurement for organizations all over the world and is currently pioneering work in selvesware technologies designed to augment aspects, attributes, and talents of productive individuals. He is particularly interested in the future co-evolution of expertise, advice, and human agency as technologies become smarter than the people using them.
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Mari Lundström is a Professor in Hydrometallurgy and Corrosion. Mari is strongly focused in circular economy of metals and holds a chair of Hydrometallurgy and corrosion in Aalto University. She is currently acting as the head of 19 M€ Finland-based battery metals ecosystem (BATCircle2.0), as well as chair in Batteries Europe WG2 Raw Materials and Recycling. Her expertise lies in hydrometallurgical recycling, battery metals, gold, sustainable primary production and process modelling based simulation, as well electrochemistry and the group works closely in the interphase between academy and industry. After 7 years in industry, she was appointed as assistant professor at Aalto 2015, and she has built in a short time a productive research group of ca. 25 members, published >160 peer-reviewed scientific papers (Scopus 15.12.21) and supervised 11 PhDs to completion. She has raised >12 M€ competitive funding for her research group and earned several patents. In 2019 she received the Tapani Järvinen technology award.
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An architect and engineer by training, Professor Carlo Ratti teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he directs the Senseable City Lab, and is a founding part-ner of the international design and innovation office Carlo Ratti Associati. He graduated from the Politecnico di Torino and the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris, and later earned his MPhil and PhD at the University of Cambridge, UK.
A leading voice in the debate on new technologies’ impact on urban life and design, Car-lo has co-authored over 500 publications, including “The City of Tomorrow” (Yale University Press, with Matthew Claudel), and holds several technical patents. His articles and interviews have appeared on international media including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Scientific American, BBC, Project Syn-dicate, Corriere della Sera, Il Sole 24 Ore, Domus. His work has been exhibited worldwide at venues such as the Venice Biennale, the Design Museum Barcelona, the Science Museum in London, MAXXI in Rome, and MoMA in New York City.
Carlo has been featured in Esquire Magazine’s ‘Best & Brightest’ list and in Thames & Hud-son’s selection of ‘60 innovators’ shaping our creative future. Blueprint Magazine included him as one of the ‘25 People Who Will Change the World of Design’, Forbes listed him as one of the ‘Names You Need To Know’ and Fast Company named him as one of the ’50 Most Influen-tial Designers in America’. He was also featured in Wired Magazine’s ‘Smart List: 50 people who will change the world’. Three of his projects – the Digital Water Pavilion, the Copenhagen Wheel and Scribit – have been included by TIME Magazine in the list of the ‘Best Inventions of the Year’.
Carlo has been a presenter at TED (in 2011 and 2015), program director at the Strelka Insti-tute for Media, Architecture and Design in Moscow, curator of the BMW Guggenheim Pavilion in Berlin, and was named Inaugural Innovator in Residence by the Queensland Government. He was the curator of the Future Food District pavilion for the 2015 World Expo in Milan and chief curator of the "Eyes of the City" section at the 2019 UABB Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism of Shenzhen. He is currently serving as co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Cities and Urbanization.
Minna Halme is a Professor of Sustainability Management at Aalto University School of Business. Her research focuses on co-creation of sustainable innovations for solving grand challenges. She is Associate Editor of Organization & Environment, and member of the editorial boards of several journals in the field of sustainability and management. She is member of several national industry and public policy boards, including Finland’s Sustainable Development Expert Panel. She is co-founder of Aalto University’s cross-disciplinary Creative Sustainability master programme, Aalto Sustainability Hub, and Aalto Global Impact, and her work has received both scientific and societal impact awards.
Julia Lohmann is a Professor of Design Practices in Contemporary Design. Julia investigates the ethics and values of our relationship with nature. She founded the Department of Seaweed, a transdisciplinary community of practice exploring algae as a sustainable design material. In 2020, Julia presented her work at the World Economic Forum, promoting ocean literacy and regenerative practices. Julia Lohmann is contributing to several international research consortia, and her work is exhibited and part of major public and private collections worldwide.
Jan is a quantum physicist and co-founding CEO of IQM, building next-generation quantum computers. IQM has assembled an exceptional team of international quantum experts developing on-premises systems for HPC and special applications. IQM has raised more than EUR 71 million in funding, including the largest seed investment round in Finnish history. Jan did his doctorate on superconducting quantum circuits at TU Munich and worked as a Marie-Curie Fellow in Helsinki at Aalto University, where he holds the title of docent. In 2020, Capital magazine selected him as one of 40 under 40 in Germany and he received the prestigious entrepreneurship award from the KAUTE Foundation. Jan is in the Board of the European Innovation Council EIC, the European Quantum Industry Consortium QuIC, and member of the German Federal Economic Senate (Bundeswirtschaftssenat).
Dario Forneris is the Business Design and Sustainability Lead at Nordic Bioproducts Group, a start-up with its roots at Aalto University. In Nordic Bioproducts Group, Dario is developing circular business concepts with design thinking and eco-design toolkits. He is working constantly to build a design-driven culture within the company’s R&D team and to define innovative methodologies during product development.
George leads Product & Partnerships at Gradient. He brings over 20 years of product management and engineering experience from the networking, processor, and semiconductor markets. He held senior executive and marketing positions at Qualtre, Bluespec, and others where he led product teams, and engineering positions at LSI Logic and IBM, where he developed microprocessors and operating system software. He has a BSEE and MSEE in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, and an MBA from Harvard University.
After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering with a minor in Mathematics, I worked for ExxonMobil for almost 9 years in various roles across commercial shipping, refining, and logistics. My headquarters experience included optimizing regional marine fleets to move crude oil & refined products most efficiently, global digital project design and implementation, and managing regional inventory levels and supply chains for all North America specialty refined products. While at the Baton Rouge refinery, I led several projects at the intersection of manufacturing and logistics that developed new products, increased sales, and improved the customer experience without sacrificing refinery throughput or cost in the specialty refined products & asphalt markets. I have been the Business Development Lead at Amogy since December 2021, where my role is to establish, develop, and maintain connections with industry partners as well as to develop our strategy and lead some of our maritime projects.
Jordan is the CEO and Founder of Mobilus Labs. As an Inventor, Engineer, and Entrepreneur he has focused his career on developing intelligent systems to operate in extreme environments. His experience in this field includes working with MIT, Lockheed Martin, and Co-Directing the NASA Frontier Development Lab. He’s a member of the Royal Academy of Engineers, former TEDx speaker and enjoys working with underrepresented youth in STEM fields. Jordan received his degrees from MIT and Stanford University in Aeronautical / Astronautical Engineering with a focus on Ocean and Space Robotics.
Henry is the driving force behind the core Leela AI software. He worked on common-sense AI learning and computer vision systems at the MIT AI Lab, and developed distributed location-based services together with a wearable sensor network architecture at NTT DoCoMo. Most recently he worked on scalable cloud sensor-data analysis at Google Nest Labs. He is a graduate of MIT (SB, MSc).
Håkan Agnevall is President and CEO of Wärtsilä Corporation.
Wärtsilä is a global leader in innovative technologies and lifecycle solutions for the marine and energy markets. We emphasise innovation in sustainable technology and services to help our customers continuously improve their environmental and economic performance. Our dedicated and passionate team shape the decarbonisation transformation of our industries across the globe.
His most recent role was President of Volvo Buses and member of the Volvo Group Management.
In his earlier career Håkan has held senior management positions with ABB and Bombardier in the fields of power systems, robotics and industrial automation. He has extensive international experience, having worked and lived in the U.S., Canada, Thailand, Brazil, Switzerland and Sweden.
Håkan holds an MSc in Engineering Physics from the Lund Institute of Technology, Sweden paralleled with a BSc in Business Administration at the University of Lund, Sweden. He also holds an MBA from IMD, Switzerland.
Nathalie Ahlström has acted as the President and CEO of Fiskars Group, the global home of design-driven brands for indoor and outdoor living, since 2020. The company operates in more than 30 countries and owns brands such as Fiskars, Gerber, Iittala, Moomin by Arabia and Royal Copenhagen. The company is on an ambitious growth journey to make the everyday extraordinary through pioneering design. Prior to Fiskars Group, Ahlström worked in various management and leadership positions at Huhtamaki, Amcor, and Fazer Confectionary in Singapore, Switzerland and Finland. She has a Master’s degree in technology.
Mikael Hannus graduate as M.Sc. in Chemical Engineering from Åbo Akademi University in 1994 and an eMBA from Stockholm School of Economics in 2002.
He has served Stora Enso since 1997 indifferent positions including CSR, Energy, Biorefining, Tech scouting and since 2016 within the Group innovation and R&D, which he leads since 2022. Additionally, Mikael Hannus is the Executive Secretary of the Marcus Wallenberg Price for recognize, encourage and stimulate path-breaking scientific achievements for the forest industry.
Lars Peter Lindfors received his M.Sc. in Chemical Engineering from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden in 1989. He received his doctoral degree with honors in the field of chemical reaction engineering, from Åbo Academy, Finland, in 1994. He received his MBA from Henley, UK in 2005.
He held several researcher and managerial research positions at Neste (1989–2001), both withinOil & Gas and Chemicals. He then moved to the Perstorp Group, where he was Executive Vice President, Renewal, Technology and Development (2001–2007). He then joined Neste for the second time in 2007, taking on the responsibility as Vice President for Research and Development (2007–2009). Now he is the Senior Vice President (SVP), Innovation, being responsible for, among other units, the Research & Development and the build-up of new business platforms for growth. Previously he served as SVP, Technology & Strategy (2009– 2012) and as SVP Technology (2013-2018).
He has had a key role in leading the Technology development related to the Renewable Business since 2007, regarding the broadening of the feedstock base and developing process technology.
In 2013 Lars Peter Lindfors received the Finnish ‘Energy Initiative of the Year Award’ and in 2014 he was recognized with the ‘2014 CTO of the Year Award’, by the Technology Academy Finland. In 2015 he received the Knight, First Class mark of honor by the President of Finland. In 2016 he received the Business-IT executive of the year award in Finland, by Sofigate, and in 2018 he was recognized with the Eric and Sheila Samson Prime Minister’s Prize for Innovation in Alternative Fuels for Transportation.