Polina Abushik, Anni Hartikainen, Soila Lemmetty, Iuliia Pilipenko, Isabell Rumrich, Atte Eskelinen and Henri Hyvönen were appointed to three-year UEF Research Fellow positions.
Article updated on 20 November 2025: Arjen Gebraad and Maria Skalska-Tuomi, who were originally appointed to UEF Research Fellow positions, received Academy Research Fellow funding. Atte Eskelinen and Henri Hyvönen will replace them as UEF Research Fellows.
Seven new UEF Research Fellows have started at the University of Eastern Finland this autumn. They are Polina Abushik from the A.I. Virtanen Institute for Molecular Sciences, Atte Eskelinen from the Department of Technical Physics, Anni Hartikainen from the Department of Environmental and Biological Sciences, Henri Hyvönen from the Department of Social Sciences, Soila Lemmetty from the School of Educational Sciences and Psychology, Iuliia Pilipenko from the School of Pharmacy, and Isabell Rumrich from the School of Pharmacy.
The University of Eastern Finland has used the UEF Research Fellow recruitment model since 2022. In this model, researchers receiving a good score (5-6) but not selected for funding by the Research Council of Finland will be invited to apply for the UEF Research Fellow positions. The requirement is that their funding for the Academy Research Fellow projects has been applied for to the University of Eastern Finland.
With the UEF Research Fellow recruitment model, the university wants to promote the careers of talented researchers. The first UEF Research Fellows were appointed in June 2022, and the newly selected UEF Research Fellows have, in most cases, started their three-year term on 1 September 2025.
The University of Eastern Finland will recruit new UEF Research Fellows from among well-performing Academy Research Fellow applicants also in summer 2026.
“At UEF, we are particularly proud of our promising researchers who represent a wide range of disciplines. The UEF Research Fellow model is designed to support them at the early stages of their career as an independent researcher,” says Jussi Pihlajamäki, Vice Rector for Research and Innovation.
Research into health, the atmosphere, the environment and learning
Polina Abushik’s research project enhances our understanding of the pathogenesis of, and therapeutic strategies for, Alzheimer’s disease, AD. The study uses live human neurons in acute slices obtained from cortical biopsies of live patients with idiopathic normal pressure hydrocephalus (iNPH) as a tissue model of Alzheimer’s disease to study how AD pathology changes neuronal function.
Chronic pain experiences in knee osteoarthritis are always personal and multifactorial. Atte Eskelinen's research provides new understanding on pain factors such as inflammation, personal pain sensitivity, and sleep quality before and after knee replacement surgery, and establishes the first computational modeling framework implementing osteoarthritis-associated pain mechanisms and triggers. The new models and fundamental understanding of pain mechanisms will be used to build model-guided, personalized pain mitigation programs for osteoarthritis patients.
The air we breathe is affected by the evolving emission and air quality regulations and by the introduction of new technologies. Anni Hartikainen’s research project aims to examine how changes in particulate emission sources ultimately affect air quality. She will investigate the formation processes of combustion-derived soot emissions and their influence on the behaviour and formation of pollutants in the air.
Henri Hyvönen’s research project examines how Finnish male nurses’ masculinities are shaped in a setting where the infrastructures and practices of care work strive to produce efficiency and quantitative outcomes. Previous research suggests that professional care requires men to engage in emotional labor and demonstrate softer forms of masculinity, comprising identity elements associated with both masculinities and femininities. However, increasing time pressure and efforts to improve efficiency have shifted professional care from people- and service-oriented labor toward task- and performance-oriented labor.
Soila Lemmetty’s research project investigates the connections, manifestations and consequences of workplace learning and employee-driven innovation in Finnish public and private sector organisations. Her research generates new knowledge on how organisations can support adults’ continuous learning and thereby promote ethically sustainable innovation. The findings provide a foundation for new workplace-pedagogical solutions that respond to the growing demands for learning and innovation in working life.
Most retinal diseases, affecting over 300 million people worldwide, remain without effective treatment. The number of newly diagnosed cases exceeds a million each year. Iuliia Pilipenko’s research project is dedicated to enhancing both the efficacy and availability of retinal therapy by introducing innovative, safe and long-acting drug delivery methods.
Planetary health stresses the interplay between the environment and human health, highlighting that understanding the interplay is fundamental for improving public health. Isabell Rumrich’s research project addresses the research gaps by integrating complex system thinking into environmental health, allowing for interactions and feedback loops. The effects on size at birth will be analysed to support public health interventions by better understanding mixture effects and susceptible populations.
