Professor Heidi Salonen's Installation Talk: Indoor air quality – Importance and threats

Heidi Salonen was appointed as a tenured associate professor at the Aalto University Department of Civil Engineering on 1 November 2021. The field of her professorship is indoor environment technology, in particular the topic of indoor air quality. Salonen has served as the deputy head of the department from January 2022.

Salonen's research field is interdisciplinary and Salonen has more than 20 years of work experience in various indoor air and indoor environment quality research and development projects. She leads the indoor environment technology research team at Aalto University and serves as primary investigator and consortium leader in several indoor air and indoor environment quality research projects, including InChildHealth, funded by the EU, and CleanSchool, funded by the Academy of Finland.

In recent years, Salonen's research team has investigated topics such as the experienced and measured quality of indoor air and factors affecting these in various indoor environments and indoor climate conditions. The aim of the research is to find solutions for ensuring high-quality indoor environments in collaboration with industry, property owners and associated government authorities. Salonen has published over 100 peer-reviewed scientific articles in connection with her research projects.

Salonen completed her Master of Philosophy degree in 1997 and her Doctor of Philosophy degree in 2009 at the University of Kuopio (now the University of Eastern Finland). The title of her doctoral dissertation was Indoor air contaminants in office buildings. Salonen also holds a degree in the field of management.

In 2015, she left a senior researcher's position at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health to join Aalto University as assistant professor of indoor environment technology. Salonen had worked at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health since 1998. During 2011–2013, Salonen worked at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia as a postdoctoral fellow. She currently retains an adjunct associate professor's position at the Queensland University of Technology. Salonen spent the winter of 2016–2017 in the United States as a visiting researcher at the University of Texas at Austin

She holds several positions of trust in Finland and internationally: for example, she is a board member of the Finnish Society of Indoor Air Quality and Climate, a reviewer of several scientific journals and the chair of the scientific board of the Indoor Air 2022 conference.

Salonen is the teacher-in-charge of two master's-level and two bachelor's-level courses. Since 2015, she has supervised more than 70 theses.

Welcome to hear the installation talks on Wednesday 27 April 2022 at 14.15 at Dipoli.

Program for Tenured Professors' Installation Talks 27.4.2022