Please introduce yourself.

I am a naval architect from Finland with about 45 years of experience of education and research in marine technology related topics. During my 16 years as a professor of marine traffic safety in Aalto University, I have been concentrating on the analysis of marine traffic safety both in open water and in ice. Full-scale experiments have been my favorite research topic and I have been onboard ships on all ice-covered waters: Baltic Sea, Russian Arctic, Canadian Arctic and Antartica.

What kind of knowledge experience do you bring to TalTech?

During my professorship in Aalto University, I have established a number of new master level courses related to marine safety and I have developed an active research group, supervising more than 135 master thesis and 15 doctor thesis during 2006–2022. I have educated 6 professors and they are working today in Finland, Poland, Canada, Brazil and China. I have also been extremely active to apply successfully funding from both national funding sources as well as EU and other international funding. I have a well established international network with my colleagues worldwide.

What are your goals as a professor at TalTech?

The plan is to establish a very active research group on the topics such as Hydrography, Aids to Navigation, Waterway design, and Nautical Cartography in Estonia. Internationally, the aim is to apply science-based solutions on managing the safety of waterways and ensuring maritime safety (including hydrography, navigational risk assessment, waterway design, etc.). In practice, this means that my aim is to have 3–5 active doctoral students and one post docs in my research group. This enables the education of possible candidates to continue my professorship after my possible retirement from TalTech.

In education, I will be active in developing further two courses in master level (Waterway and shipping safety and maritime risk management; Maritime spatial data analysis and visualization) and one doctor level course (Design, development and maintenance of ports, waterways and coastal areas).

One surprise that you have had within your time at TalTech?

I am surprised by the drive TalTech has on all organisational levels of the personnel to develop TalTech for high international scientific quality on the current important maritime topic of digital transformation affecting widely the maritime community. My main interest is how this will affect the safety of maritime activities.