UMK | Uusien materiaalien keskus | Center for New Materials

New Materials, Applications and Commercialization -

five days intensive course


The "New Materials, Applications and Commercialization" five day intensive course for selected postgraduate students in material sciences - broadly understood - was arranged by the UMK Center of New Materials for the third time last August and September, 24-26.8 and 15-16.9. Additional financial support was provided by the Graduate School of Chemical Sensors and Microanalytical Systems - CHEMSEM, the Graduate School in Nanosciences, the Graduate School on New Materials and Processes and the Nanotechnology. The number of attendees was limited to 25 students.

The target group is highly motivated and gifted postgraduate students with excellent knowledge of science, but with little knowledge of the world outside the academia. The objective is to provide hands-on learning of what additional skills are required when leaving the university. For this very reason almost all lecturers came from outside the Aalto University. The program is found under the link (Course program).

Group work and interactive learning were important parts of the program. To change the mindset of the participants the main group work was to find a problem, not necessarily linked to their own research, and subsequently provide a plan how to commercially solve it., instead of trying to commercialize starting from the research work the students do.

The very encouraging feedback summary from participants is found under the link (Course feedback). It is obvious that this type of training should be provided and supported by the Aalto University.

Did the course make you more likely to go into any kind of commercialization of research (either entrepreneurial or within existing organizations)?

Runar Törnqvist


Doctoral student Suvi Varjonen's thoughts on the course

Doctoral student Suvi Varjonen is one of the graduate students taking part in the UMK New Materials, Applications and Commercialazion course. She found out about the course from her graduate school's web pages and from the newsletters UMK sent out to their member groups.

Suvi Varjonen has been doing her doctoral research on biochemical modification of nanocellulose modification in Professor Olli Ikkala's group under the leadership of Markus Linder from VTT. Before starting her dissertation work she worked for a year as a researcher at VTT. Even though the dissertation is done for Aalto, she is still a member of the nanobiomaterials group at VTT, and so benefits from the know-how of both organisations.

"The contents and form of the course seemed interesting, and they did indeed turn out to be just that. A special thank you goes to the experts from different fields and the executive level talks from small companies. It is great that you can fit so much top level information into five days", Suvi Varjonen sums up.

In conversations with her course mates the absence of medium level company representative talks was brought up. Most participants seemed to have missed these in the course. The interactional teaching also got thanks from everyone. This is something that would be nice to see more of elsewhere too, instead of the very one-way lectures. In the new Aalto this wish is sure to come true.

"The group work was done with the same group, and so getting to know others at the course and their thoughts didn't really happen very much during the day, especially as the general activity was pretty low. It might be a good idea to rotate group members", Suvi says. "Because I couldn't attend the evening program of the course myself, I can't estimate if the exchange of thoughts was fulfilled during the couple of evenings", she continues.

Aila Blomberg



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