Good research arises from good networks

The University of Eastern Finland is a member of the Academy of Finland’s Flagship on Forest-Human-Machine Interplay, UNITE. One of the goals of UNITE is to enhance the efficiency of forest management and forest operations, and Professor Mikko Vastaranta at the School of Forest Sciences co-leads the UNITE workpackage on Disruptive Technologies for Capturing Forest Structure and Functioning, while Professor Heli Peltola, also at the School of Forest Sciences, is the leader of the UNITE workpackage Smart Decision Support for Human Actions in Space and Time. Associate Professor Calders is involved in UNITE in an advisory capacity, making his expertise on 3D and 4D forest models, and on digital twins of forests, available to Finnish researchers.  

“It’s actually amazing how well our workpackage is linked to Kim’s research and his new ERC project. We, too, are creating digital twins of forests and use them to understand how forests and trees function. Kim is providing us with additional expertise related to digital twins, and his research design also gives us a different, more global perspective,” Vastaranta explains.

“The information emerging from our work can be used to inform forest management in the event of disturbances, such as forest fires, for example. When we understand what kind of forests are — and are not — able to recover from disturbances, we can allocate limited forest management resources to where it makes most sense,” Vastaranta says.

“In the Finnish context, the information emerging from our work can help to inform forest owners’ decision-making as well as forest policy,” says Senior Researcher Ninni Saarinen, who’s also involved in UNITE.

Friendships and professional links intertwined

The foundation for collaboration between Finland and Belgium was laid nearly two decades ago, in 2006, when the paths of Ninni Saarinen and Kim Calders crossed for the first time in Vienna, Austria. Back then, they were both on student exchange and became friends.

“We were part of a larger group of people that has stayed in touch ever since, and we’ve been organising reunions every year, in fact, up until COVID,” Saarinen says.

Calders has been very mobile throughout his career, and his networks are large. According to him, it’s a good thing for the EU to stimulate mobility from a young age; for instance, the professional link between Saarinen and him wasn’t established until a decade into their friendship.

“The forest science community isn’t that big. Kim’s been doing what he does for many years, and he’s well connected, and that’s been helpful to us, too. In any case, our generation has been taught to build networks and to find new collaborators, it’s kind of in our blood,” Saarinen says.

“In fact, Kim has been a collaborator in all my successful research proposals,” Vastaranta interjects, laughing.

There are also new projects and initiatives on the drawing board: next summer will witness a COST Action summer school, where Saarinen and Calders will be leading a working group on laser technologies. The summer school will bring together PhDs and postdocs from several European partner institutions, offering them an opportunity to focus on 3D technologies in the context of forests.

Talent, good collaboration and a little bit of luck

Kim Calders recently secured an ERC Starting Grant for his SPACETWIN project at the University of Ghent, which sets out to create the most comprehensive forest models built so far. The models are in 3D, but through time, so there actually is a fourth dimension to them. The models will be used to study how different disturbances, such fire, logging and drought, affect forests and their ability to recover from disturbances.

“The plots we use are very local and not that large, so we want to use these models together with simulations. We simulate satellite data to create a link between what we observe on the ground to how we can monitor that with satellite data, which is of course very helpful if we want to do upscaling, for example,” Calders says.

Ninni Saarinen, too, submitted an ERC proposal and was interviewed, but not selected for funding this time. Her proposal was very similar to Calders’, but with just one disruptor, fire. Calders and Saarinen also commented on each other’s proposal drafts.

“Traditionally, researchers are not very comfortable with sharing their research ideas and draft proposals, but it really pays off. Most ideas really aren’t that unique, and others are thinking about the same things: it’s your unique background or approach that can bring something extra to the table. It’s better to share your ideas than to jealously protect them – and that’s actually the philosophy behind open science, as well,” Saarinen points out.

Getting one’s proposal accepted or rejected is a matter of talent, but luck is a factor that can’t be fully excluded from the equation, either. According to Calders, good proposals outnumber the funding available, and success eventually boils down to detail, and a little bit of luck.

“Collaborating with others leads to better funding opportunities, instead of trying to do everything on your own,” he says.

Leading by example

Talking to the researchers, it’s clear that they’re all very enthusiastic about their work. Yet, they also bring up good work-life balance, and their own role in advocating it.

“Researchers often talk about having a passion for research, and that’s all good and well, but it can also be a factor that leads to exhaustion. It is important to have other things in your life besides just work,” Saarinen says.

“It’s important to lead by example: let people see that we as supervisors take our holidays and turn our out-of-office messages on. Even if you sometimes work crazy hours, that needs to be balanced by good recovery,” Vastaranta says.

“I think working five days a week is such an ancient view of how we should work. We’ve made so many technological advances in so many aspects of life, but we are not really using them to make our lives easier; instead, we just use them to do more,” Calders says, rolling his eyes.

And leading by example, the researchers are getting ready to turn their out-of-office messages on: next up, it’s a week of holiday amidst the snow-covered trees of Finnish Lapland.