Newly appointed Adjunct Professor Nora Sillanpää studies urban stormwater

The professorship is in the field of urban stormwater management – the water in urban areas coming from rain and melting snow. The professorship is funded by Maa- ja vesitekniikan tuki ry, and it is part of the Water and Environmental Engineering research group. The post of adjunct professor makes it possible for distinguished experts in a field teach part time.

Sillanpää also works as Service Manager for Sitowise water services where her tasks include urban stormwater management planning, developing planning services and procedures, and research collaboration. She promotes collaboration and information sharing among different actors in the field as the deputy chair of the stormwater division of the Water Association of Finland, which she founded in 2018.

‘Research in water and environmental technology is one of our school's most important areas of expertise. More skilled people will be needed in the field in the future, and I am happy that we are getting Nora Sillanpää to enhance our teaching in water and environment technology. Cooperation with companies in the field puts researched information into practice while at the same time bringing the university valuable knowledge about practical problems’, says Gary Marquis, Dean of the School of Engineering.

‘Urbanisation is a megatrend in Europe and around the world. New kinds of nature-based solutions are needed in the management of stormwater. The means of managing the amount and quality of stormwater and making mechanical and computational estimates on them are an important part of research in water and environmental technology at Aalto University’, says Harri Koivusalo, Professor of water resources engineering

Nora Sillanpää has lengthy experience about stormwater. She has been developing and popularising research into hydrology in urban areas and research into the sustainable management of stormwater in Finland since 2003. Before moving on to planning work she worked with stormwater at the Helsinki University of Technology, the University of Helsinki, and Aalto University. 

Sillanpää defended her doctoral dissertation in the field of hydraulic engineering in 2014, after which she worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Water and Environmental Engineering research group until 2019. She was actively involved in the Smart & Clean collaborative project involving universities and companies for the management of runoff water. Sillanpää is an experienced teacher and has served as an advisor for several doctoral dissertations and master's theses at Aalto University.

Contact information:

Nora Sillanpää
Water and Environmental Engineering research group
[email protected]
Tel. +35844 3427 9109