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The Land and Water Technology Foundation (Maa- ja vesitekniikan tuki ry) has donated 2 million euros for Aalto University's Water & Development Group. The donation will enhance doctoral education and research in water resources management, particularly in the field of sustainable development related to water, which plays a significant role in the research conducted at Aalto University.

The donation will be used to develop an operating model which will help develop doctoral education to become increasingly systematic, better supervised and more persistent and to generate new innovations. A further aim is to create increasingly extensive doctoral programmes and to also provide other investors with a model for broad-based cooperation with Aalto University.

The model involves forming cells out of post doc researchers, doctoral candidates and students working on their master's theses to examine supervision, group formation and financing as a whole. Researchers and students will work on the same research topic, the activities will be enhanced with co-learning and overlapping work will be avoided with a clear distribution of duties.

'I am delighted by the support received by doctoral education in water engineering', says Dean of the Aalto University School of Engineering Gary Marquis. 'Other investors may also benefit from the novel cooperation model', he adds.

The multidisciplinary Water & Development Group studies the significance of water as a cornerstone of sustainable development at both global and local levels. The group is led by Professor, Vice Dean Olli Varis, holder of the Matti Pursula Chair. Central research areas include urbanisation, security concerns, poverty, food and energy issues as well as the environment and climate change. The research group is particularly known for its global analyses and research on developing economies in Asia as well as how these aspects can be taken into account in policy-making in Finland.

'The group led by Professor Varis is an excellent example of how open-minded and solution-oriented research can be used to influence global issues', says President of Aalto University Tuula Teeri. 'It is important to have knowledge of the state of sustainable development around the world as we can use research to affect well-being both globally and in Finland', she continues.

The Water & Development Research Group, which belongs to the School of Engineering, operates at the Department of Built Environment, in the research area of water and environmental engineering.

More information .

Professor, Vice Dean
Olli Varis
School of Engineering
olli.varis@aalto.fi

The Land and Water Technology Foundation (Maa- ja vesitekniikan tuki ry) is an association founded in 1949 by eleven Master of Science (Technology) graduates from the field of agricultural engineering at the Helsinki University of Technology. The association supports the study of water engineering, related environmental engineering and soil protection. Over the past few years it has provided grants to over 200 students and researchers.