Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. Hakovirta is Associate Director of Research, Institute of Paper Science and Technology at Georgia Tech. Previously Dr. Hakovirta worked about 10 years in several R&D, technology and business development positions in Metso Corporation. For the past 5 years Dr. Hakovirta was Chief Technology Officer of Metso Corporation (Corporate Vice President for Technology, Environment and Quality). During his industry career Dr. Hakovirta has been a strong advocate of open innovations and public private partnerships. For example in Finland he served as the first Vice Chairman of the Board in FIMECC Ltd. a new incorporated operating model for open innovations that aims to increase and deepen the cooperation between companies, universities and research institutes in world class research. FIMECC Ltd. has since then been very successful and currently runs eight research programs having total value of about $300 million ($ 60 million in 2010).

Before joining Metso Corporation Dr. Hakovirta has worked both in Academia and Large International Research Institutes. He worked as a fellow at CERN (European Center for Particle Physics), Geneva, Switzerland and at LANL (Los Alamos National Laboratory), New Mexico, USA as a director’s funded post-doctoral fellow.

Earlier in his career Dr. Hakovirta held a faculty position at the University of Helsinki, Department of Physics where he also holds an adjunct professorship. Dr. Hakovirta has received Awards from several public and private foundations, Academy of Finland, and Los Alamos National Laboratory (Outstanding Innovation of the Year).

Dr. Hakovirta’s research interests are in novel forest based biomaterials, nanomaterials applications and materials synthesis using plasma and ion beam techniques. He is also interested in sustainability research related on global business especially related to the pulp and paper industry.