Ultralow temperature physics is one of the frontier areas of science where new and fundamentally important discoveries can be expected. The same applies to brain studies; we are, again, dealing with a rapidly expanding field to unknown territory. The years 1990 - 2000 have been declared "Decade of the Brain". More than 60 people work in the LTL. Of these over 80% are scientific staff, the others are clerical and technical personnel. More than one third of our scientists have a doctorate, another third are graduate students, and the rest are undergraduates working for their Diploma Theses.
The Laboratory is financed partly by the University and partly by the Academy of Finland. The University employs about a fifth of our personnel and provides the basic capital equipment, while the Research Councils for Natural and for Medical Sciences of the Academy meet a large part of our operating costs and pay the salaries of many of our scientists.
In addition, extra funding for applied projects has been often available from the Finnish Government's organizations SITRA and TEKES. Support from private sources, such as the Körber-Stiftung (Hamburg), the Sigrid Jusélius Foundation, the Finnish Cultural Foundation, the Emil Aaltonen Foundation, the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation, and the Vilho, Yrjö, and Kalle Väisälä Foundation, is also of considerable importance, especially in the form of scholarships for our graduate students. Under the auspices of the European Community's Human Capital and Mobility program (MOB) two Large-Scale-Installations will be started by the end of 1993 in the Low Temperature Laboratory: ULTI in ultralow temperature physics and BIRCH in neuro- and cardiomagnetism. The heart studies will be carried out in the University's Laboratory of Biomedical Engineering. These projects, to be operated entirely by EC financing, will run for four years.
The Director of the LTL is Dr. Olli V. Lounasmaa, Professor of the Academy of Finland. Our senior research staff include Professors Riitta Hari and Matti Krusius, Docents Antti Ahonen, Peter Berglund, Pertti Hakonen, Risto Ilmoniemi, Jyrki Mäkelä, Aarne Oja, Mikko Sams, and Erkki Thuneberg, and Drs. Matti Hämäläinen, Jukka Knuutila, Jukka Kyynäräinen, Kaj Nummila, Riitta Salmelin, Juha Simola, and Pekka Soininen. Long-term (over 1 year) foreign visitors include Professors Claudia Tesche and Grigorij Volovik and Drs. Alexei Babkin, Linda McEvoy, and Patricia Pardo. Our chief administrator is M.Sc. Marja Holmström.
