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, a workshop on Nucleic Acid Nanotechnology, brought a large number of international top researchers to Espoo in the end of May. Ninety-four international scientists and 18 people from Aalto University participated in the event.

The workshop consisted of about 30 talks and 65 poster presentations. Fifteen speakers were invited to the event. Many of them are pioneers and well-known top researchers of their field.

The field of Nucleic Acid Nanotechnology is very multidisciplinary. The background of the researchers is often in either biochemistry, biophysics, computer science, or mathematics.

‘The share of computer science and mathematics in the field is remarkable and increasing. These days, DNA nanostructures are so complex that designing them by hand and without systematic designing principles is not possible,’ says Professor Pekka Orponen, one of the organizers of the workshop.

Multidisciplinarity is also visible in the background of the organizers. Orponen organized the event together with Assistant Professor Anton Kuzyk from the Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering and Docent Veikko Linko and Associate Professor Mauri Kostiainen from the Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems. ‘Anton Kuzyk took the most responsibility,’ says Orponen.

The event met, or even exceeded, Orponen's expectations. ‘ was excellent. Their talks represented the most recent research and were of very high quality. The debates were lively and professional.’

According to Orponen, the feedback received by the organizers was solely positive. He says that similar European workshops on the same topics have been organized in different cities for already some years. However, they don’t officially form an organized series of meetings.

Nantech2019 was the first one organized in Finland. It was supported by Aalto Science Institute, Aalto Health Platform, Aalto Material Platform and Federation of Finnish Learned Societies. The next European meeting on DNA nanotechnology will be held in Rome in June 2020.

Photos Matti Ahlgren ja Anton Kuzyk / Aalto University
Group photo Glen Forde / Aalto University