Paivo Kinnunen

I'm a professor focusing on inorganic materials in circular economy, leading the Magnesia-Based Materials and Systems research group at the Fibre and Particle Engineering Research Unit, where I started in 2012. The focus of my research group is to begin to address the climate change by enabling construction materials that act simultaneously as a carbon sink, enabling large scale carbon capture, storage and utilization (CCS/U). To do that, we focus on the chemistry of Mg-based materials, since Mg is the most promising element available that can deliver on that.

I graduated from the University of Michigan with PhD in Applied Physics in 2011. After graduation I worked in a start-up company, Life Magnetics, Inc. in Ann Arbor, USA as a co-inventor and lead scientist. I then worked as a postdoctoral researcher and senior research fellow at University of Oulu, before being appointed to the current position in January 2024. I act as an associate editor in the Structural Materials section, of the Frontiers in Materials -journal, chair of the InStreams Hub, coordinating Finnish inorganic circular economy research, as well as the chair of RILEM Technical Committee on Magnesia-based cements.