Evaluation Report Publications of the Academy of Finland 1/11

Research environment
The instrumental infrastructure available in the ÅA and UTU region is outstanding. 
The active strategy for quality in undergraduate teaching has resulted in an inflow of 
talented and interested students, which renders recruitment of good PhD students 
easier.
Research networking and interaction
PhD students are recruited from both Finland and abroad, the official teaching 
language of ÅA obviously not being a limiting factor at this stage. At the national 
level, the unit participates in four national graduate schools. Although the number of 
PhD students enrolled is limited, all ÅA organic PhD students benefit from all 
graduate schools.
The unit, by all research seniors, is actively collaborating with units in the ÅA/
UTU region. At a national level, the unit is active within the organic synthesis 
network. Collaboration is also a means to get access to additional competencies and 
advanced characterisation methods. The unit’s international contacts are mainly 
European. The unit has been and is active within COST actions as well as within the 
European funding network ERA-Chemistry. Several PhD students have spent a few 
months in a European laboratory during their studies. All research-active seniors have 
or have had commissions of trust at the national level or wider.
Recommendations
The unit should maintain its very high level of achievement and the focused diversity 
in research themes. In order to continue and improve the outstanding efficiency and 
quality in output achieved in the evaluation period, the amount of external funding 
should be secured at a substantially higher level than at present, and ideally with a 
higher proportion of long-term contracts. Strategies for this necessary increase should 
be developed and very actively pursued.
The unit could consider the “People” calls of the EU Framework Programmes, as 
well as other EU sources with lower administrative workloads.

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