Person Category: Helsinki

Prior to joining Spinverse, Niklas lived in Dubai for seven years, where his latest position was head of Pöyry’s management consulting business in the Middle East. He built a practice and team working with both energy and industrial clients, ranging from regulators and utilities to large conglomerates. Niklas has also throughout his international career worked in innovative start-ups and large industrial companies.

Niklas is an international leader and driver who through building trust and strong relationships, solving problems and leading international teams is at his best in dynamic environments facing change or transformation. He has acted as trusted advisor in strategy and organisational development to a number of executives in large companies.

Niklas holds a Master of Science in Engineering (Production Economics) from Helsinki University of Technology, Finland, as well as a Professional Designation in International Business Management from UCLA, USA. He is a Finnish citizen and fluent in Finnish, Swedish, and English.

In his spare time, he likes to spend time with his two sons, born 2004 and 2006, as well as engage in various outdoors and indoors sports.

Pekka’s extensive network covers the highest-ranking European innovation leaders from large corporations, most innovative SMEs, research institutes, universities and governmental organizations both in European Commission and Member States. 

Pekka’s experience in lobbying covers driving regulation and budget for innovation both in Finland and at EU-level.  As Chair of the Technology Industries of Finland, he has driven lobbying agenda for increasing public funding for industrial ecosystems. As a President of European Association of Innovation Consultants, he wishes to emphasise the importance of professional project building and management and industry’s role in driving European innovation. 

Before founding Spinverse, Pekka had exciting 14 years at Nokia during its growth phase.  He joined Nokia as a smart card expert for the company’s first GSM phone and wrote software that shipped in 500 million pockets.  His later achievements included cellular network market entries in a number of emerging countries, facilitating Nokia’s  ecosystem strategy and developing corporate venturing operations.  His extensive international career includes expatriate assignments in China, Singapore, UK and Czech Republic.

Pekka holds an MBA from IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland and a Master of Science degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Oulu. His marriage to Laura includes an extended family of five children. Former endurance-sports enthusiast, a finisher of a dozen marathons, triathlons and long-distance races in cycling and cross-country skiing, he now relaxes by snowboarding, playing golf and sailing.

Prior to working with Spinverse, Eeva was the business director of the Finnish national nanotechnology cluster programme, promoting the Finnish nanotech SMEs to the potential end users (2011-13), and led the nanotechnology centre of expertise of Helsinki region (2007-10). The professional highlights include e.g. Nano High Level Group of the European Commission, introducing Finnish nanotechnologies to the presidents of Croatia and Portugal, and hosting the Nanotech Finland stand for the prime ministers of Finland, Russia and France.

In 1999-2007 Eeva worked at Okmetic Oyj, a Finnish silicon wafer manufacturer. At Okmetic, she e.g. developed and commercialized new silicon wafers for MEMS, providing also technology support for selected European and Asian key customers.

Eeva’s doctoral thesis in 1999 from Helsinki University of Technology – nowadays known as Aalto University – summarized the research on electrochemical behaviour of conductive polymers. Eeva has published e.g. 5 peer reviewed articles in international scientific journals, articles on webpages, magazines and books. She has also given tens of invited lectures in international events and chaired numerous seminars, sessions and panels.

During her spare time, she enjoys time with her family in Turku archipelago.

Timo has over 20 years of experience in power and automation industry, telecommunications and organisation consulting in R&D, manufacturing engineering and machinery. In addition, he has been responsible for designing and managing several strategic leadership training programmes for a global R&D organisation. He has carried out cultural transformation programmes in large corporations as well.

Timo has done post-doc research on robotics in Mechanical Engineering Laboratory, MITI, in Japan. He has studied and done research at University of California, Santa Barbara. Timo holds a D.Sc. (Tech) degree at Aalto University (Helsinki University of Technology), where he is currently a docent in mechatronics.

In his spare time, Timo enjoys running, skiing, playing the guitar and singing.

Pirjo joined Spinverse in 2011 and soon after that started Spinverse’s EU-project services. She has been the Project Coordinator for IP4Plasma (4,6 M€ and 9 partner project for new manufacturing method for medical diagnostics and devices), did cost modeling for MEMS devices on Prominent project (9,4M € and 10 partners) has helped to build and manage several H2020 and ECSEL projects, such as smart-MEMPHIS (8,2 M€ project for energy harvesting devices for leadless pacemakers), EuroPAT-MASiP (28 partner and 29 M€ project for new semiconductor packaging solutions), APPLAUSE (32 partner and 37 M€ project on new packaging solutions for optical components), among others. Altogether, Pirjo has helped customers to get over 110 M€ funding. She has also done multiple research commercialisation projects on various topics ranging from lasers to new nanomaterials.

Before Spinverse, she was working for Nokia Research Center (2000-2011), doing research on nanotechnology, designing new 4G radio communication systems and performing reliability assurance and statistical analysis for mobile phone production.

Pirjo holds a PhD in Theoretical physics from Helsinki University. She has over 20 scientific publications on nanotechnology, radio communication systems, information theory and mathematical physics, several other technical articles including two book chapters, and over 20 patents.

In her spare time, Pirjo enjoys reading, gardening, hiking and cycling.

Mikko is a seasoned professional with a versatile business and technology background. He has been successfully leading business units both in Vaisala and Nokia Networks, leading R&D and technology units, strategy and business development and marketing. In addition, Mikko has been working in three start-ups and is a board member of two additional start-ups. He holds a patent for radio network based positioning. Kauppalehti selected Mikko as one of the 100 information technology forerunners in 1997.

Mikko holds Master of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Aalto University. He has been lecturing regularly in Aalto University on Electronics, Product Development, Communications Networks and Leadership. He is also Authorized Personal Trainer (APT, FISAF) and NLP Practitioner.

In his spare time, Mikko develops house monitoring and control system both for his home and his holiday home, quantifies himself with several electronic device and applications, coaches junior ice hockey players, plays ice hockey himself and practices for endurance events: cycling, mountain biking, running, skiing, skating and orienteering.

At Spinverse, Pekka is involved in preparing, managing, and coordinating innovation projects together with large companies and SMEs. He is also an experienced in securing innovation funding from EU and Business Finland to support companies’ growth strategies. In addition to his daily tasks in innovation project preparation and coordination with customers, he is currently managing two large ecosystem projects. smart-MEMPHIS – an EU-wide project in the field of microelectronics, and  LuxTurrim5G – a consortium project enabling new solutions for Digital Smart Cities through fast 5G networks. Pekka has also been part of building an ecosystem project for the Digital Fiber Initiative, an ecosystem aiming to boost the renewal and growth of the forest industry with the help of digitalization.

Pekka holds D.Sc. (Tech.) degree in Industrial Engineering and Management from Lappeenranta University of Technology. Before joining Spinverse, Pekka has worked as a Researcher at Lappeenranta University of Technology where his research focused on studying Open Innovation, and technology management strategies in manufacturing industry with special emphasis on firm competitiveness in emerging markets. At the university, Pekka was also involved in coordination of a large international research project on multinational enterprises’ impact on socioeconomic and global development challenges in developing markets.

In his spare time, he likes swimming, hiking, and spending time in nature. He also enjoys travelling and getting to know new surroundings and cultures.