Professor appointments at the School of Engineering 2022–2023

Anna Mikola

Anna Mikola, D.Sc. (Tech.), was appointed as assistant professor at the Department of Built Environment for the period 1 June 2022–31 May 2026. The field of the professorship is water engineering in the circular economy.

Mikola's research interests include the separation of nutrients from wastewater for use as fertiliser through the NPHarvest process. NPHarvest technology can be used to process different types of wastewaters, such as agricultural or municipal wastewater as well as landfill leachate.

She has previously worked as Professor of Practice of Municipal Wastewater Treatment, starting in 2018, and as consultant in Kiuru&Rautiainen Oy and Ramboll. She completed her Master of Science in Technology degree at Helsinki University of Technology in 1998 and her doctorate in wastewater treatment at Aalto University in 2003. 

Mika Salmi

Mika Salmi, D.Sc. (Tech.), was appointed as assistant professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering for the period of 1 August 2022–31 July 2026. The field of his professorship is sustainability in manufacturing. He is researching how to make more efficient products from less material in a more sustainable way. He also holds a title docent in medical digital design and manufacturing from the University of Helsinki.

Salmi received his doctorate from Aalto University in 2013 in the field of medical applications of additive manufacturing in surgery and dental care. He has worked as staff scientist at the Department of Mechanical Engineering and as research director at the Aalto University Digital Design Laboratory, starting 2016.

One of the Salmi’s recent research project focuses especially on quality assurance of 3D printing with the help of artificial intelligence. 3D printing makes the manufacturing of products more efficient, but the bottleneck of large-scale use is the uncertainty of whether the products will pass the strict quality requirements set for them. Salmi leads a joint project between Aalto University and EOS Finland Oy, developing a new method for quality verification.

‘Traditionally, product quality has only been evaluated when the product is ready, but with the help of the method developed in this project, quality can be evaluated and developed already during the 3D printing process. The method utilises artificial intelligence to detect and compensate for defective areas in different layers of the product using information from process monitoring sensors’, says Salmi.

Ossi Kaario

Ossi Kaario, D.Sc. (Tech.), was appointed as associate professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering for the period 1 July 2022–30 June 2027. The field of his professorship is computational fluid dynamics. 

Kaario completed his doctorate at the Helsinki University of Technology in 2007 in the field of computational flow dynamics. Before that, he worked for VTT for several years. At TKK and Aalto University, Kaario first worked as a senior research fellow in 2006–2018 and later as a senior scientist in the years 2019–2022 as a member of Professor Martti Larmi's team.

His research is related to computational modelling of phenomena related to droplet sprays, gas jets and combustion, with applications in engines and in the pharmaceuticals, among others. Kaario has a wealth of teaching experience and has supervised numerous dissertations.

Mohamed Noureldin

Mohamed Noureldin, PhD, was appointed as an assistant professor at the Department of Civil Engineering for the period 22 September 2022–21 September 2026. The field of his professorship is structural engineering. 

He has more than 15 years of industrial experience in the field working as a lead structural engineer for various leading international companies such as Samsung Engineering (SECL) and Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI). His industrial experience includes buildings, industrial plants, tall buildings, offshore structures, and petrochemical plants. 

Noureldin received his doctorate in the field of structural engineering in 2014 from Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea. After his doctorate, he worked as an adjunct professor and as an assistant professor at the same university between 2015 and 2022 before moving to Aalto University. 

In the future, several challenges will be posed to civil structures such as meeting high environmental requirements, dealing with aging structures worldwide, and reducing carbon emissions. Utilizing AI techniques and developing new structural materials can play a crucial role in overcoming these challenges and creating sustainable and resilient structures. Noureldin’s research is devoted to developing sustainable, resilient, and safe civil structures using advanced artificial intelligence technologies and smart structural materials. 

At Aalto, his research focuses on three themes: holistic design of structures based on sustainable development and AI techniques (such as deep learning, machine learning, etc.); structural health monitoring using advanced sensing techniques, computer vision, and digital twin; and application of new & smart materials in structures using soft computing techniques and data-driven models. 

Tuuli Jylhä

Tuuli Jylhä, D.Sc. (Tech.), has been appointed assistant professor at the Department of Built Environment for the period 1 January 2023–31 December 2026. The field of the professorship is management of real estate.

In 2016–2022, Jylhä worked as an assistant professor in real estate management at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment of Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. She completed her Master of Science in Technology degree in 2008 and her doctorate in the field of real estate business in 2013, both at Aalto University.

In her research, she is interested in circularity in the built environment. Her research focuses on narrowing and slowing the consumption of resources in the existing building stock through solutions and interventions that provide value with less resources. This includes, for example, service life extensions of buildings, sharing and co-use of spaces and places, process re-engineering, hybrid working, and user-led REM models. 

Jylhä's research focuses on solutions that aim to reduce the amount of resources consumed by existing building stock and to create value with fewer resources. In practice, this translates to extending the service life of buildings, sharing and co-use of spaces and places, process re-engineering, hybrid work and user-led models of real estate management.

Sergei Khakalo

Sergei Khakalo, D.Sc. (Tech.), was appointed as assistant professor at the Department of Civil Engineering for the period of 1 March 2023–28 February 2026. The field of the professorship is structural mechanics.

Khakalo gained an MSc degree in 2013 in Applied Mechanics at Saint-Petersburg State Polytechnic University. In 2017, he completed his Doctor of Science (Tech.) degree in the research field of Civil Engineering with a major in Structural Mechanics at Aalto University. After his doctorate, he worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Civil Engineering. In 2018, Dr. Khakalo joined the Integrated Computational Materials Engineering group at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd., where he worked as a research scientist till his appointment as a professor.

In his research, Dr. Khakalo integrates such fields as materials science and mechanics of materials with the physics of solids and structures involving rigorous mathematical analysis and computational methods. He believes that his multidisciplinary research experience is a key ingredient to innovate in the field of structural mechanics and shape the future of the discipline.

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