Satu Häkkinen appointed as Assistant Professor of Polymer Chemistry at Tampere University
After graduation from University of Helsinki in 2017, Dr. Häkkinen had courage to leave homeland for University of Warwick, UK. There she acquired her PhD degree developing new polymerization strategies and state-of-the-art functional polymers for friction modification (2021). She then continued as a Postdoctoral researcher under the NSF Center for Sustainable Polymers at the University of Minnesota, USA, investigating the synthesis and properties of new biorenewable polyamides.
In her new appointment as an Assistant Professor, Dr. Häkkinen aims to establish a new research group focusing on polymer chemistry and polymer materials. Her research aims to tackle environmental and societal challenges, such as the plastics crisis, by developing new synthetic strategies and using contemporary polymerisation techniques to access next-generation materials. The group will be part of the Chemistry & Advanced Materials (CAM) research cluster, the PREIN Flagship on Photonics Research and Innovation.
Her professorship is funded through the PROFI 7 action “Sustainable Biomedical and Toxicological Research” (SUSBIO; link here) from the Research Council of Finland, aiming bringing together soft matter researchers from the ENS and Medicine and Health Technology (MET) Faculties. New sustainable polymer chemistries are anticipated to play a key role in the design and fabrication of soft functional materials of tomorrow, allowing in longer term e.g. to reduce animal testing and accumulation of microplastics in different living environments. Hence Satu’s activities are central to the goals of the SUSBIO action.
