About Me
I am currently a tenured full professor of physics in Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, Florida. I teach engineering physics and physics classes, perform heliophysics research and instruct student research.
I was born in Western Finland and grew up together with a German Shepard called Max. We were a wild couple causing lot of head-ache for my mom. I would eat from the same plate with the dog which is probably why I got a strong immune system.
We then moved around several times: east, north, back to east. My favorite places were Lapinlahti where our house was surrounded by a forest, full of blue flowers. It later became famous for the band: "Lapinlahden Linnut" (The Birds or Lappi-Gulf).
My other favorite places to live were Anttola and Sonkajärvi. In Anttola we lived in an Island, called Tiilisaari (Brick-island). I loved adventuring around the island with my neighbors Ville and Kalle. I also had two pet rabbits but they escaped and ate Kalle's and Ville's mom's flowers so we took them to an neighboring island where we would vistit them frequently. They lived happily ever after until foreign tourists ate them (they thought they were wild rabbits).
I moved to Sonkajärvi when I was 10. The dialect was so different I had first hard time understanding what people said. It was a place full of interesting people. Much Later, Sonkajärvi became famous for Wife Carrying World-Championships.
As a child I was interested in insects, mathematics and black holes. My mom tried to get me interested in stamp collecting after my insect farm escaped from luggage which I had stored in my mom's walk-in closet.
I was also an avid card player (mostly poker where the high bets were paperclips with coloring mistake) which got me interested in probability.
I got interested in Space and wanted to go to Moon after seeing the documentary about Neil Armstrong when I was 6.
I was also a girl scout briefly but they kicked me out because I smuggled cards to scout-camp and organized a -poker ring in order to win more special colored paper-clips.
I finished my high-shcool in Mikkeli, Finland until I finally moved to Helsinki to start my university studies in Theoretical Physics. From Helsinki I moved to Netherlands where I worked in European Space Agency on the SMART-1 mission before entering the PhD program in Space Physics in United States.
I did my Ph.D in Faibanks, Alaska under the Northern Lights. University of Alaska Fairbanks is a pioneering place in Space Physics. Many famous space scientists have their roots there, e.g., Syun-Ichi Akasofu, Sydney Chapman and Antonius Otto.
In addition to space plasma physics and Northern Lights viewing, Fairbanks was also great place for hiking and moose spotting.
After my Ph.D I worked in Cluster mission in Imperial College London, the PI institution for the Flux Gate Magnetometer. The view from Imperial tea-room is rather different from that in Alaska.
Mountain biking in Finland in summer 2021
In my free time I enjoy swimming, biking the Ormond loop, running, oil-color painting and yoga.
