Evaluation Report Publications of the Academy of Finland 1/11

Research environment
The unit has access to state-of-the-art experimental equipment and is located in the 
modern facilities offered by the UJ Nanoscience Center (NSC). To a large extent, the 

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unit develops its own instrumentation, and has been able to take advantage of national 
and regional infrastructure funding initiatives to develop a versatile optical laboratory 
suited for the study of real-time dynamics. The building of new equipment and 
maintenance are to a large extent handled by PhD students, providing valuable 
training and making the unit less dependent on highly specialised technical assistance. 
There is, however, a lack of local funding to cover everyday expenses for very small 
laboratory equipment.
The unit has the senior staff capacity to engage more students and postdoctoral 
researchers in the research. The unit recognises the need to ensure that all students 
complete their PhD studies. The PhD students are able to get relevant jobs both in 
industry and academia. The panel strongly encourages that PhD students active in the 
unit who are aiming for an academic career spend time also outside the unit during 
their studies. The age profile of the permanent staff is very broad, which, together 
with well-developed collaborations, makes the unit’s activity viable even if some key 
staff members would leave the group. The unit is well equipped with computational 
resources from local computer clusters as well as from the CSC, the IT Center for 
Science.