Keynote Speakers

8th Karelia Symposium keynote speakers

Marjukka Kolehmainen

Marjukka Kolehmainen is Professor (Food and Health) (https://uefconnect.uef.fi/en/person/marjukka.kolehmainen/). Her expertise is within health effects of diets, foods and food components that she has been studying in acute, short and long term human interventions for over 20 years. Main scientific interest has been in the effects of whole grain cereals, rye and berries, and their bioactive compounds from the molecular level to whole body physiology, especially in their effect on inflammation, and more recently on gut microbiota and gut barrier function. She has also studied interaction between physiological and mental stress, and the impact of stress and recovery on eating behaviour. She has ca. 150 peer-reviewed publications, and has supervised or is currently supervising 25 postgraduate students and postdocs.

Kirsi Mikkonen

Kirsi S. Mikkonen is Associate Professor in Food Sciences. She teaches Food Technology at the University of Helsinki and leads the Food Materials Science research group (http://www.helsinki.fi/food-materials-science). The multidisciplinary research group contributes to developing a more sustainable food system. The group’s research interests include valorization of industrial side streams for food and packaging materials, focusing on wood and grain hemicelluloses, lignin, and fungal biomass. The group also studies vegetable shelf-life and develops active packaging materials to prevent food waste.

Emilia Nordlund

Emilia is working at VTT as a Research Manager of Industrial Biotechnology and Food, and is by education DSc (Tech) for Bioprocess engineering from Technical Helsinki University of Technology and acting also as a docent in Food Biotechnology at University of Helsinki. Emilia’s ambition is to generate well-being to people and environment by innovative solutions based on food and biotechnology research, and at VTT she manages the research portfolio related to those strategic research and innovation areas. Her scientific expertise is in plant based ingredient and food technologies, especially bioprocessing, and development of novel food processing concepts for efficient and sustainable food chain. She has explored how cellular agriculture, i.e. biotechnical food production can be used for future food production, and currently she is coordinating Food without Fields project funded by Catch the Carbon program of Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of Finland. Moreover, she has studied new ways to support healthy eating by developing new concepts for personalized food delivery and eating. Emilia is eager to rethink the existing processes from the beginning and develop even disruptive technologies to build a sustainable and wellbeing society for all the continents on the planet.

Hanna Koivula

Hanna is a materials engineer, scientist and university lecturer with a (scientific) passion for studies materials, structures, surfaces and interactions. Hanna’s degrees were obtained at Åbo Akademi University where she studied M.Sc. in technology in chemical engineering with a major in physical chemistry and a D.Sc. technology in paper coating and converting. She has worked now nearly 10 years at University of Helsinki, at the department of Food and Nutrition applying her knowledge on studies on interactions between food and packaging. She ventures out from the interaction studies to study and teach the food packaging also more broadly from sustainability, value chain and packaging user perspectives.

Kati Riekkinen

My name is Kati Riekkinen, and I am working as an early-stage researcher at the institute of Public Health and Clinical Nutrition at the University of Eastern Finland. Mainly I am working for different projects, but I am also a PhD -student and the topic of my research is to find out new methods or ways to improve microbiological safety and quality of food. Trends of food market are changing; consumers are pleased more natural food and preservatives but at the same time sale period of food products have extended and longer shelf-life are required. However, traditional food pathogens, such as listeria and salmonella, are very common problem in food industry, and these microbes cause several hundreds of even thousands of food poisonings all around the world every year. Also, antimicrobial resistance of foodborne microbes is an emerging issue. Thus, new tools and solutions are needed to ensure food safety and high quality.