The Academy of Finland has granted a total of 2,038,112 euros of funding from the FIRI2021 call to the University of Eastern Finland for the building and upgrading of national and international research infrastructures.
The Academy of Finland announced the FIRI projects and consortia to receive funding on 8 December. The University of Eastern Finland participates in six of the funded FIRI consortia, and funding for the development of infrastructures was granted to all faculties of the university.
Professor Kari Lehtinen at the Department of Applied Physics secured 623,954 euros of funding as part of the INAR RI consortium, which responds to challenges relating to environmental sustainability and climate change. INAR RI is an umbrella research infrastructure, coordinating the distributed national nodes of European environmental research infrastructures (ICOS, ACTRIS, eLTER and AnaEE). INAR RI is benchmarking in the integration of multidisciplinary comprehensive environmental measurements with measurement stations, laboratories, mobile units and data infrastructures.
Professor Mikko Vastaranta at the School of Forest Sciences secured 516,843 euros of funding as part of the Scan4est consortium, whose time series collected using laser scanning techniques help the international scientific community understand forest dynamics and tree growth. The research infrastructure is built around detailed spatial-temporal measurements of approximately 10,000 trees in different growth environments in Evo, southern Finland.
Professor Marjukka Kolehmainen at the Institute of Public Health and Clinical Nutrition secured 352,022 euros of funding as part of the FOODNUTRI consortium. The FOODNUTRI research infrastructure will contribute to achieving the global strategic aims included in the EU’s FOOD 2030 policy through solutions that utilise domestic raw materials and new processing and packaging technologies, and by providing information on the composition, structure and safety of food and their raw materials, the physiological significance of food, consumer attitudes, food consumption, nutrient intake and the sustainability of food choices.
Professor Olli Gröhn at the A.I. Virtanen Institute for Molecular Sciences secured 206,793 euros of funding as part of the EURO-BIOIMAGING (EUBI) consortium. EUBI is a pan-European infrastructure network, and the Finnish node, FinnishBioImaging (FIBI), offers especially PET, MRI, MEG and intravital imaging services, which are used specifically in biomedical research.
Professor Mikko Laitinen at the School of Humanities secured 196,983 euros of funding as part of the FIN-CLARIAH consortium. FIN-CLARIAH is a research infrastructure for social sciences and the humanities, comprising two components: FIN-CLARIN supports research that is based on language, and DARIAH-FI develops infrastructure for large, heterogeneous datasets for research in the humanities and social sciences.
Professor Alfred Colpaert at the Department of Geographical and Historical Studies secured 141,517 euros of funding as part of the Geoportti consortium. Geoportti - Open Geospatial Information Infrastructure for Research is a unique virtual research infrastructure (RI) enabling easy access to geospatial data served from spatial data infrastructures and other sources, and geocomputing solutions for many disciplines using geospatial data.
Further information
For the researchers’ contact information, please see UEF Connect.
