Risto Nieminen - Biography#

Risto Nieminen is Distinguished Professor of Physics (emeritus) at Aalto University in Finland and its former Dean of Science. His research area is condensed-matter and materials physics, especially theoretical and computational methods as applied to multiscale materials modelling. He has pioneered first-principles electronic-structure calculations for atomic-scale defects and nanosystems. He studied at Helsinki University of Technology (now Aalto University) and in Cambridge University, and was post-doctoral fellow at NORDITA, Copenhagen.

Risto Nieminen has been associate professor at Jyväskylä University, Finland and visiting professor at Cornell University, USA, before joining Aalto in 1987.

He served as the founding scientific director of the Center for Scientific Computing (CSC) in 1989-96. He was the founder and director (2000-2013) of COMP, the Finnish Center for Excellence for Computational Nanoscience at Aalto. He is former chairman of the Psi-k European Network for electronic-structure calculations and member of its trustees.

Professor Nieminen is a honorary chairman of the Finnish Cultural Foundation and Fellow of American Physical Society, Institute of Physics (UK) and Finnish Physical Society.

He was granted the title of Academician of Science in 2014, and is the past President of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. He is International Member of the National Academy of Sciences (US).

He is presently the Editor-in-Chief of Electronic Structure (Institute of Physics, UK) and of the Lecture Notes in Computational Science and Engineering (Springer, Germany).