University of Turku Invites Applications for the Pentti Malaska Futures Award

The future isn’t just some place we are going to, we create it. As a part of the national Futures Day, the University of Turku opens a call for the Pentti Malaska Futures Award for the third time. We are looking for a bold, research-based innovation that can help in building a more sustainable global future. 

– Also after the Covid-19 pandemic, our planet and the entire humanity will continue to meet more complex challenges and changes. In order to solve these problems, we need brave, ground-breaking and visionary thinking, research and innovations. With the Futures Award, we want to encourage this kind of work, says Director Juha Kaskinen from the Finland Futures Research Centre of the University of Turku which coordinates the application for the Award. 

The Pentti Malaska Futures Award is €30,000. The application period is 5 March–26 April 2021. The main criteria for the innovations participating in the competition are: 

• sustainable development 
• visionary thinking 
• academia–business collaboration 
• boundary-crossing approach in research and society 

The competition is open to Nordic futures researchers and multidisciplinary research teams with a future-oriented research approach. The new and innovative solutions we are looking for should be based on academic research or be in some other way closely linked to the academic world. To be eligible, the solution has to be already developed, a prototype, tested or patented, or the solution’s innovation potential has been proven in some other way. Solutions that are only at the idea stage cannot be entered into the competition. 

The members of the panel deciding the winner are Mika Hannula (Vice Rector, University of Turku), Riikka Heikinheimo (Director, Confederation of Finnish Industries (EK), Ulla Hytti (Professor, Turku School of Economics, University of Turku), Sofi Kurki (Senior Scientist, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland), Niko Kyynäräinen (CEO, Turku Science Park Ltd.).  

See full details about the competition at: www.utu.fi/futures-award.

The Award honours Professor Pentti Malaska’s (1934–2012) lifework in futures research. Pentti Malaska was a professor of financial mathematics and statistics at Turku School of Economics and established the Finland Futures Research Centre in 1992. Malaska was a radical, visionary thinker whose research interests crossed a wide range of academic disciplines from mathematics and electrical engineering to philosophy, ecology and strategic management. His work boldly crossed sectoral boundaries between the academic world, business world and societal influencing. 

The Finland Futures Research Centre of the University of Turku founded in 1992 is the largest Nordic research centre focusing on futures research and foresight. Futures research is a multidisciplinary field that studies a variety of topics extensively, and brings together the approaches and research results of the more traditional disciplines. The cornerstone of the Finland Futures Research Centre’s philosophy is to promote transformation towards more ecologically balanced, economically sustainable, socially and culturally equal futures.