University of Helsinki

HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO, University of Helsinki, Finland

The University of Helsinki has a strong research emphasis. Out of more than 20 universities in the country, UHEL receives 24% of the total budget funding for universities, employs 21% of all professors, but hosts 57% of the national Centres of Excellence in Research, elected by international scientific panels. The University of Helsinki has been invited to be a member of the League of European Research Universities (LERU). Scientists from the Department of Agricultural Sciences will participate in AMIGA. This Department conducts research on plant production, animal production, and technologies pertaining to them. Research includes applied, strategic and basic aspects, and one of its strengths is in finding common ground between the basic and the applied.

Role

University of Helsinki is the scientific coordination of WP8 (IPM), research on baseline studies and contributions to WP1, WP2, WP3, WP5, WP6 and WP10, field experiments with GM-potatoes, cost-benefit and feasibility studies for IPM options (WP10).

Staff members’ profile

Prof. Heikki Hokkanen, professor of agricultural zoology. He holds a PhD in applied entomology (1983, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA). He has a long track record of coordinating international collaborative research, e.g. at the OECD Directorate for Agriculture in Paris. He coordinated the EUproject ERBIC (FAIR5), currently coordinated FP7 project ‘ForestSpeCs’. He is member of the national Plant Protection Advisory Board, Ministry for Agriculture and Forestry. Editor-in-Chief of BioControl (1997-2006) and founding EiC of Arthropod-Plant Interactions (2006-).

Dr. Econ. Ingeborg Menzler-Hokkanen is a postdoctoral project researcher. After a solid research and publication record within pure economics, she has focused first on the socio-economic aspects plant biotechnology, and then of pest management. She was a workpackage leader in the EU-project MASTER, which investigated the incentives and constraints of farmers to adopt IPM technologies. She is currently a researcher and WP-leader in the EU-project FORESTSPECS.