This year, the Elias Tillandz prize for the best scientific paper published in 2017 in BioCity Turku was awarded to two research groups. The prize was presented on Thursday, 23 August 2018.
Materials Chemistry Research Group (MCRG) at the University of Turku obtained a Raman microscope device. This unique instrument offers information on structure and chemical properties of materials, non-destructively.
The University of Turku was ranked among the 301–400 best universities in the Academic Ranking of World Universities this year. Simultaneously, the drop in the ranking of the University of Turku that had lasted for a few years changed course for a strong rise.
On Monday, 13 August, academics from South Africa, Zimbabwe and Tanzania visited the University of Turku. The visitors were part of the Southern African-Nordic Centre (SANORD) where the University of Turku was a founding member when the network was established in 2006. The international SANORD conference is organised in Finland for the first time on 15–17 August.
There will be nearly fifty open vacancies for fixed-term doctoral candidate positions at the University of Turku from 1 January 2019 onwards. The call for applications will be open 3–21 September 2018. This is already the sixth year for all the 16 doctoral programmes to open their call for applications simultaneously.
Researchers from the University of Turku, Finland, and the University of Palermo, Italy, studied the similarity of investment decisions in the financial market and how the investment strategies used by the investors influence the volatility of the markets by using an exceptionally large set of empirical data. The results help in understanding the operation of financial markets and shed light on the connection of earlier theories to the actual stock market.
The Taiwanese NTU Ranking has ranked the best 800 universities in the world. In the 2018 ranking, the University of Turku was placed 335th.
Humans have been capturing wild Asian elephants for more than 3,000 years for different purposes, and this still continues today despite the fact that the populations are declining. An international team of researchers has now analysed records of timber elephants in Myanmar to understand the effects of capture on the animals and their survival. The study shows that even years after their capture, wild-caught elephants’ mortality rate remains increased, and their average life expectancy is several years shorter compared to captive-born animals.