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Ilkka Niemelä, President of Aalto University, has appointed Professor Seppo Junnila as Vice Dean for Research at the School of Engineering. His three-year term begins on September 1, 2021. Professor Pentti Kujala will continue as the vice dean responsible for vice dean for innovation and impact.

“I appreciate Seppo Junnila's visionary thinking and his experience in the fields of the built environment and construction. To be successful, research needs sufficient funding, and Junnila is well acquainted with the most important forms of research funding, such as the Academy of Finland and strategic research funding (STN), as well as Business Finland and EU research funding. I think it’s an advantage for whole school research. The development of doctoral education is also close to his heart”, says Gary Marquis, Dean of the School of Engineering.

Seppo Junnila works as a professor of real estate business at the Department of Built Environment. His research focuses on lifecycle technologies, management in urban and real estate development, sustainable real estate economics and lean management, innovation and entrepreneurship in the real estate and services industries. Professor Junnila has led several large research projects involving dozens of industrial partners. He currently leads a group of twelve doctoral students.

In addition to his professorship, Junnila has worked as a docent at Tampere University of Technology in the study of the life cycle of real estate and the built environment. He has worked several times as a visiting researcher at the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University.

Prior to his academic career, Junnila worked in numerous consulting positions, for example as Business Development Manager and Department Manager, and as Business Director at the Finnish Innovation Fund (Sitra).

Junnila defended his dissertation (2004) at the Helsinki University of Technology, Department of Civil Engineering and Environmental Engineering on The environmental impact of an office building throughout its life cycle. The dissertation received a grant from the Finnish Association of Civil Engineers for the best dissertation of the year.