Research Council of Finland Centres of Excellence

The Antimicrobial Resistance pandemic is considered a major global crisis because it threatens human health, not only in the form of non-treatable infections but also by complicating modern medicine as we know it: Without protective antibiotics, it would be impossible to carry out procedures such as intensive cancer treatment, organ transplantation and prosthetic joint surgery.

The Multidisciplinary Centre of Excellence in Antimicrobial Resistance Research takes a comprehensive approach to understanding determinants of antimicrobial resistance across scales from a One Health perspective that incorporates humans, animals and the environment. The researchers from different scientific disciplines will work in close collaboration in order to achieve the interdisciplinary scientific goals.

The director of the Multidisciplinary Center of Excellence in Antimicrobial Resistance Research is Marko Virta.  The centre comprises research groups operating at the University of Helsinki and University of Turku

The Centre of Excellence in Immune-Endothelial Interfaces (IMMENs) investigates the role of lymphatic vessel endothelium in controlling immune responses.

Our immune system protects us from infections and diseases, and developments in immunotherapies have resulted in breakthroughs in cancer treatments. However, when immune responses are out of balance, they can cause chronic inflammation or autoimmune diseases. While systemic immune regulation has been studied extensively, we now recognize that crucial control also occurs locally at the site of inflammation – yet how these responses are regulated remains unclear. IMMENs focuses on understanding how endothelial cells lining lymphatic vessels communicate with immune cells to control immune responses in both healthy and diseased states, and on developing new methodologies and tools to study these interactions. 

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of understanding immune regulation to better protect society against infectious threats. Inflammation also plays a key role in many common diseases, including cardiovascular diseases, neurodegeneration and cancer, influencing disease progression and severity. By identifying molecular mechanisms that can be targeted to modulate immune responses more precisely, IMMENs has the potential to enable more effective precision therapies.

The director of the Centre of Excellence in Immune-Endothelial Interfaces is Prof. Taija Mäkinen. The centre comprises research groups from the University of Helsinki and the Åbo Akademi University.

The Centre of Excellence in Meliorist Philosophy of Suffering (MePhiS) places the problem ofsuffering – both human and non-human – at the center of philosophy. It deepens our understanding of the nature of suffering and develops our ethical stance to affliction.

Serious hope in our difficult times must recognize the realities of life and criticize the promises of naïve optimism. The starting point of MePhiS is the meliorist (Lat. melior, better) idea that the world can and ought to be made better by means of piecemeal human efforts. According to meliorism, a positive outcome is neither inevitable (optimism) nor impossible (pessimism), but something we may legitimately hope for if we actively do our best.

MePhiS will critically assess optimistic and instrumentalizing accounts of the meaningfulness of suffering – and of the world. By integrating philosophical and more broadly humanistic research, it develops an empirically enriched, pragmatic, and meliorist philosophy of suffering, renewing both academic and societal discussion. The five research groups within the interdisciplinary Centre of Excellence examine, among other things, the methodology of the philosophy of suffering, the antitheodicy discussion in the philosophy of religion, ways of alleviating extreme suffering in the history of ethics and law, the role of suffering in literature and the philosophy of literature, as well as the relation of lived religion and non-religious worldviews to suffering.

Four among the five MePhiS research groups are hosted by the Faculty of Theology at the University of Helsinki and one group by the Faculty of Social Sciences at Tampere University. The Director of MePhiS is Sami Pihlström, Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the University of Helsinki.

The Centre of Excellence in Music, Mind, Body and Brain studies how the cognitive, emotional, embodied, and interactional experience of music develops, and how music functions as a powerful engine of change throughout the life span.

Music is a source of pleasure, aesthetic enjoyment, and recreation that also engages the brain extensively, and that can enhance learning, social interaction, and mental wellbeing. However, the individual, contextual, psychological, and neural mechanisms underpinning the efficacy of music are not yet well known.

The Centre of Excellence in Music, Mind, Body and Brain will provide new knowledge on the multimodal experience and mechanisms of music from childhood to old age as well as in different developmental, psychiatric, and neurological disorders across life stages. The centre will also develop new music-based methods that can support learning and improve emotional, cognitive, motor, and social wellbeing in both daily life and educational and rehabilitation settings.

The director of the Centre of Excellence in Music, Mind, Body and Brain is . The centre comprises research groups at the and at the Faculty of Medicine and Faculty of Education of the University of Helsinki led by and .

The aim of The Centre of Excellence in Nationalism Research in the Humanities is to explain how nationalism works in practice, how it influences the lives of different groups of people, and to expand our understanding of nationalism’s various manifestations and functions.

The CoE studies nationalism from the perspectives of historical scholarship and cultural memory studies. Our research task is to explore how people’s experiences, emotions, and memories interact with national systems of meaning-making and how nationsare constructed in human action.

We use and develop approaches of everyday and personal nationalism, minority nationalism, memory studies, national indifference, and critical archival studies.

The Centre of Excellence in Nationalism Research in the Humanities is a joint project of four research organizations. The Centre of Excellence and Metanationalism and the Processesof Nationalization research team is led by Ville Kivimäki (Research director, Finnish Literature Society). Ulla Savolainen (University lecturer of Folklore studies, University of Helsinki) leads Nationalism beyond Borders research team, Everyday Affordances of Nationalism research team is led Tanja Vahtikari (University lecturer, Tampere University) and Ann-Catrin Östman (University lecturer, Åbo Akademi University) leads Minority Nationalisms research team. 

The Centre of Excellence in Neutron-Star Physics investigates the physics of neutron stars — the densest objects in the observable Universe — from the level of elementary particles to the dynamics of the magnetic fields surrounding the stars.

Neutron stars are extremely dense remnants of old, massive stars, whose cores are compressed to the point that even atomic nuclei no longer remain intact. Understanding neutron stars and the matter they contain is a highly multidisciplinary challenge that requires expertise not only in astrophysics but also in particle, nuclear, and plasma physics. In turn, neutron-star research helps address open problems in several related fields, ranging from heavy-element nucleosynthesis to the possible phases of elementary-particle matter.

The Centre of Excellence brings together leading experts from all relevant fields, enabling a broader and more long-term approach to research work. Its activities focus particularly on the most extreme phenomena involving neutron stars, such as their mergers, outbursts, and electromagnetic emission. The Centre also develops new computational methods and data-processing tools, and its work makes extensive use of high-performance-computing and observational facilities.

The Centre of Excellence in Neutron-Star Physics is led by Aleksi Vuorinen. The Centre comprises five research groups at the Universities of Helsinki, Jyväskylä, and Turku.

Many problems in mathematics and its multifarious applications lead to strikingly similar -  universal - questions pertaining to random structures. The geometry of random structures is often fractal. Such structures occur particularly in statistical and quantum field theory, with magnetisation and quantum gravity as examples. Random structures naturally emerge  in the derivation of macroscopic laws of nature  from microscopic ones.

The Centre of Excellence in Randomness and Structures investigates such phenomena. The Centre’s  specific goal is to understand the analytical and geometric characteristics of random structures. As this research requires expertise in a number of mathematical fields, the Centre of Excellence will bring together a new generation of leading mathematicians to solve these problems.

Random structures also make an unexpected appearance in number theory, including the structure of the sequence of prime numbers. As the noted mathematician Paul Erdős stated: "God may not play dice with the universe, but something strange is going on with the prime numbers." Among other things, the Centre of Excellence explores the random nature of multiplicative functions and the Riemann zeta function.

The Centre of Excellence also conducts research aimed directly at producing applications by  developing high-dimensional statistics as well as randomised algorithms and their geometric understanding for the purposes of computational applications and machine learning.

Among other things, knowledge pertaining to random structures is used to model the flow of water in rock, with geothermal energy production as the application target. Another target for application is the predictability of the condensation models of atmospheric aerosols and, consequently, models used in predicting climate change.  

The Centre of Excellence in Randomness and Structures is headed by Professor Eero Saksman. In addition to the University of Helsinki, the research groups comprising the Centre of Excellence are active at , and .

The utilisation of the near-Earth space is undergoing a dramatic transformation: New forces driving this change are the exponentially expanding commercial use of space, regulation, geopolitics, and the demand for green and digital transitions that rely on satellite technologies. To ensure that space remains a critical asset to the modern society, two major issues must be solved: the use of Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO) under 450 km altitude, and the reliability of the satellites and their signals under the most extreme space weather conditions. 

The VLEO orbits reside in the Ionosphere – Thermosphere (I–T) domain, which is one of the least explored regions on our planet. This is because it is hard to measure and model, and because of its complex physics including ion-neutral interactions and complicated feedbacks with ground, magnetosphere, and solar wind. Due to currently unpredictable nature of the I–T, dramatic losses of satellites have occurred even during relatively minor space weather storms.

This consortium brings together Finland’s top space physics and technology professionals, and their respective world-leading expertise that cover all key aspects in the near-Earth space and ground system. We will provide quantitative understanding in the following themes:

1. How does the Sun – magnetosphere – ionosphere – thermosphere – ground system work?
2. What are the combined, multi-faceted space weather impacts during the most extreme space weather?
3. How to fly in a high-drag environment during different space weather conditions?

Unique combination of modelling capabilities, state-of-the art ground and space-based infrastructures, and the use of historic data and cosmogenic proxies will bring a paradigm shift in quantitative understanding of the space weather effects on the I–T system from moderate to most extreme conditions. The programme has only now become possible due to increased computational resources for state-of-the art simulations and upcoming, first-of-a-kind volumetric EISCAT_3D radar complemented by new LEO particle measurements onboard Foresail-1’. 

The Centre of Excellence in Tax Systems Research investigates how taxation and regulation affect individuals, business operations and, more broadly, society, and how individuals and businesses make financial decisions.

The goal is to produce reliable knowledge in support of designing the tax and income transfer system. The research challenges previous notions on the effects of taxation on the behaviour of businesses and private taxpayers, potentially having a fundamental impact on social and public policy recommendations pertaining to a sound tax system.

The Centre of Excellence utilises extensive registry datasets, survey data and randomised experiments.

The unit is led by Professor i from . Also active in the Centre of Excellence are the and the University of Helsinki. Research is also carried out collaboratively with other Finnish institutions involved in high-quality economic tax research and top international scholars in the field.

In Indigenous thought, as well as political and legal orders, humans and their social worlds are indivisible from the environment: humans co-construct shared societies with other beings. 

The Centre of Excellence Towards Multibeing Justice: Humanity and human responsibility in Indigenous Societies examines humans’ ultimate responsibility for ensuring a good and just life for all life forms. We develop the concept of multibeing justice to encapsulate both Indigenous understandings of justice, which are rooted in relational ontologies, and the potential for this perspective to radically rethink Western legal frameworks. The CoE’s transdisciplinary research draws on Indigenous knowledge systems and conceptual frameworks, which are brought into dialogue with human, social, environmental, and legal sciences.

The Centre of Excellence is lead by Sanna Valkonen, University of Lapland. The Centre consists of researchers from both University of Helsinki and Lapland. At the University of Helsinki, the Centre is lead by Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen. 

The Centre of Excellence in Tree Biology investigates how trees take up and use carbon dioxide.

Trees bind carbon dioxide in the atmosphere through their stomata and use photosynthesised carbon for growth and development. Through their conductive tissue, trees transport the molecules produced by photosynthesis to various tissues responsible for tree growth.

The Centre of Excellence’s research will produce new knowledge needed for sustainable environmental policy.

Some individual trees are more effective as carbon sinks than others. Consequently, the findings of the Centre of Excellence on the genetic basis of the carbon sink effect can be applied also to forest tree breeding.

The Centre of Excellence in Tree Biology is headed by Yrjö Helariutta and comprises research groups based at the University of Helsinki.

The Virtual Laboratory for Molecular-Level Atmospheric Transformations, an Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence, investigates how aerosols form from gaseous compounds in the atmosphere.

The formation of atmospheric aerosols is integrally linked to two major challenges facing humanity: climate change and air quality. Namely, aerosols help cool the climate, but they also increase mortality through poor air quality.

A key problem in predicting aerosol formation is that the phenomenon is affected by an enormous number of compounds and extremely complex processes. The Centre of Excellence aims to establish an interactive virtual laboratory that will combine methods of atmospheric physics, chemistry and computer science.

The centre will produce new knowledge that can be used in climate-related decision-making and the development of technical solutions to improve air quality. The utilisation of artificial intelligence provides the opportunity to solve many unsolved problems in the atmospheric sciences, including the reactions responsible for the formation and growth of organic aerosols.

Versions of solutions to be developed by the virtual laboratory tailored for science communication also offer schoolchildren and the general public the chance to gain insights concerning not only the atmospheric sciences, but also the scientific method in general.

The Centre of Excellence: Virtual Laboratory for Molecular-Level Atmospheric Transformations is headed by Hanna Vehkamäki. The research groups comprising the Centre of Excellence are based at the University of Helsinki, , and .