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Hanna Tuomisto is an associate professor in sustainable food systems at the University of Helsinki and the leader of the Future Sustainable Food Systems -research group. Her research interests are focused on estimating the potential of novel food production technologies and dietary change to improve the sustainability of food systems. She has a strong experience in the development and use of environmental sustainability assessment methods, such as life cycle assessment and carbon footprinting. Tuomisto has been involved in researching the environmental impacts of cell-culturing based technologies for food production (e.g. cultured meat) already since 2008. Currently, Tuomisto is involved in various projects related to environmental impacts, consumer acceptance and societal impacts of novel cell-cultured foods, plant-based proteins and dietary change, but also in projects that focus on improving the sustainability of agriculture and livestock production.
Tuomisto holds an MSc degree in Agroecology from the University of Helsinki and a doctoral degree from the University of Oxford. In her doctoral degree, she compared environmental impacts of organic, conventional and integrated farming systems. After finishing her doctoral degree, she worked four years as a postdoctoral researcher at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) where she was involved in projects that developed carbon footprint and environmental footprint methods for agriculture and food sector. In 2016-2017, Tuomisto worked as postdoctoral researcher at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) where her work focused on the links between environmental change, nutrition and health.
Department of Economics and Management
Ruralia Institute, Mikkeli
Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science (HELSUS)
Future Sustainable Food Systems
Jana Moritz is a PhD student at the University of Helsinki doing the doctoral programme political, societal and regional changes (PYAM). She is a grant-funded researcher (Kone foundation) at the Ruralia Institute and part of the research team “Future sustainable food systems (F²)”.
Jana’s ongoing research focuses on cellular agriculture and specifically cultured meat as a solution towards a more sustainable future from the perspective of political stakeholders in Finland and Germany. Jana holds an MSc in sustainability science and policy from Maastricht University.
Niko is a doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki in the Political, Societal, and Regional Change doctoral program. His research focuses on consumers’ and farmers’ perceptions of cellular agriculture.
Niko is also a design professional with a Master of Arts (M.A.) degree specialising in Creative Sustainability.
Natasha Järviö is an industrial ecologist who studied at the university of Leiden and technical university of Delft. Industrial ecology is an interdisciplinary programme that focuses on closing the loops within technical sphere in the same way that they are closed in nature. It does so through taking the environment, economy, and people into account. She has done courses on renewable energy, material flow analysis, agent based modelling and life cycle assessment. Her thesis she wrote about mangrove deforestation due to shrimp farming in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. She designed a method on how to include GHG emissions from land use and land-use change of mangrove forests within LCA studies and applied it to the case study of shrimp farming in the Mekong delta. Currently she is conducting research within the working group of “cultured meat in the post-animal bioeconomy”. She is currently performing a LCA on microbial protein production. She has an interest in food, land use and its related GHG emissions, LCA and the possibility to use GIS in the analysis. She has basic programming skills (Python, R) that she wishes to improve during her PhD.
My expertise is in environmental ecology and I am working in KILPA2020 –project, which aims to produce comparative information of environmental effects of Finnish livestock production in relation to selected EU countries.
An American transplant from a llama farm in Western Wisconsin, Rachel is a PhD student in Interdisciplinary Environmental Sciences and excited to be a part of the Future Sustainable Food Systems research group at the University of Helsinki. She completed her MSc in Integrated Studies in Land and Food Systems at the University of British Columbia in Public Health and Urban Nutrition research group. Mazac's MSc thesis work involved developing a systems thinking framework for integrating sustainability considerations in national dietary guidelines. During her MSc, she also worked with collaborators on the Think&EatGreen@School project and with the New Westminster School District on a "nationally significant" universal school lunch program for Canada. Before her MSc, Mazac graduated from Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota with a BA degrees in Biology and Environmental Studies and worked for and urban agriculture and youth empowerment nonprofit, Spark-Y: Youth Action Labs.
Venla is a MSc in Agroecology from the University of Helsinki. She became familiar with life cycle assessment during her master's thesis on carbon footprints of recycled fertilizers, after which she started to work as grant funded researcher in the Future Sustainable Food Systems team. Her research is focused on carbon footprints of agricultural production and developing the LCA method concerning agricultural multi-product systems.
Laia Dalmau holds a master's degree in Environmental Agrobiology from the University of Barcelona. She joined the Future Sustainable Food Systems -Research Group as a grant-funded researcher in March 2021. Her research focuses on the environmental impacts of agricultural systems that combine agroecological farming practices, biogas production, and cellular agriculture.
Anniina Lehtilä (Liimatainen) is a M.Sc. (Agronomy) graduated from the University of Helsinki. She is a doctoral student and grant-funded researcher working both in the Future Sustainable Food Systems group and the Crop Science group. Anniina’s research is related to the environmental impact of forage production and different forage management practices, and also to the inclusion of soil organic carbon stock changes in the life cycle assessment.
Elina is a PhD student in the Doctoral Programme in Interdisciplinary Environmental Sciences and a grant-funded researcher in the Future Sustainable Food Systems research group. In her PhD, she is looking to develop life cycle assessment methods to better account for the impacts of agricultural food production on biodiversity.
Elina holds an MSc in Environmental Change and Global Sustainability and a BSc in Environmental Science and Policy from the University of Helsinki. During her master’s studies, she became highly interested in agroecology and food system sustainability and decided to continue exploring these themes in her doctoral thesis. Elina’s previous work includes conducting pollinator surveys in projects of the Finnish Environment Institute and assisting in the HYKERRYS project of the University of Helsinki that studies recycled fertilisers. Before starting her PhD project, she worked at the Environmental department of the City of Tampere where she took part in the development of the City of Tampere biodiversity programme.
Mohammad is a postdoctoral researcher in the faculty of agriculture and forestry at the University of Helsinki. His research focuses on analyzing the impacts of future food systems on the environment and the consumption of critical raw materials. Besides, he wishes to contribute to the growing research on the social impact of novel food technologies and dietary changes in food systems.
Mohammad has a good experience in dynamic modelling of systems and life cycles. He obtained his PhD from Lappeenranta university of technology in 2021, where he managed to analyze the environmental and social impacts of phosphorus circular economy and their influence on the decision-making behaviour on utilising secondary phosphorus sources.
Oskari Lahtinen is a PhD student, who is part of Future Sustainable Food
Systems research group and is working full time in Pyhäjärvi Institute, doing a
research of sustainable food production systems by utilizing Life Cycle
Assessment (LCA). He has graduated from the Environmental Change and
Global Sustainability master’s program from the University of Helsinki, with the
major in Agriculture and environment, and minor in Food and sustainability. Oskari
got familiar with LCA when writing his master’s thesis focusing the carbon
footprint of maize production in agroforestry system in Zambia.
Taiwo is a PhD student in the Doctoral Programme in Interdisciplinary Environmental Sciences and a grant-funded researcher in the Future Sustainable Food Systems research group. His research examines the environmental consequences of using agricultural feedstocks for anaerobic digestion in Finland via life cycle assessment to produce bio-methane while there are multiple ecosystem services. Taiwo holds double a MSc in Environmental Management and Geographic Information Systems from Vytautas Magnus University and the University of Ibadan, respectively.