Evaluation Report Publications of the Academy of Finland 1/11

Recommendations
This is an excellent unit that should maintain its strategy and high standard of 
research. The panel encourages the unit to more strongly recruit senior staff members 
from outside ÅA and also from outside Finland.
4.39 Åbo Akademi University, Organic Chemistry
Overview
The Laboratory of Organic Chemistry is placed within the Department of Natural 
Sciences at ÅA. In the evaluation period, the personnel resources have been two 
FTE professors, 3–4 senior researchers and postdoctoral researchers (of which 
several have been present as international postdoctoral research fellows for 1–2 
years each), and ten FTE graduate students. The unit had a total annual average staff 
FTE of about 20.
The unit’s funding was fairly evenly distributed between core funding and 
external funding, where the Academy of Finland’s contribution was close to equal 
with that of Tekes and industry. The unit participates in several national graduate 
schools.
The unit is responsible for teaching organic chemistry to science and engineering 
students in courses at both BSc and MSc levels, with involvement of students in 
ongoing research. All seniors participate to some extent in the teaching activities, as 
do all PhD students. Examinations of MScs in the evaluation period were at three a 
year and PhDs were at 1–2 a year.
During the evaluation period, the unit has begun a generation change, with one 
professor retiring on a part-time pension. Moreover, one of the professors has been 
Rector of the University for the major part of the evaluation period.
Research
The research spans several timely topics: methods-oriented organic synthesis and 
catalysis, physical organic chemistry, derivatisation of natural products (lignans, 
monosaccharides) and applications thereof, as well as organic environmental 
chemistry with a strong component of structure determination. Despite this 
diversity, there is a strong common denominator in the molecular organic 
chemistry perspective, and collaborations between groups within the unit are 
active.

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